How to Season your Swag / Bedroll
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How to Season a Swag
Seasoning a swag means wetting the canvas thoroughly and letting it dry completely before you sleep in it. The water swells the cotton fibres, which closes the needle holes along every seam. Do it once, before the first trip, and the canvas stops leaking through the stitching.
That is the whole thing. What follows is why it works, how to do it properly, and what happens if you skip it.
Why a new swag leaks at the seams
Canvas itself sheds water. The problem is the sewing. Every stitch is a needle hole punched through the weave, and on a swag there are thousands of them running along seams that sit exactly where water collects.
Cotton swells when it gets wet. The fibres take up water, expand, and press against each other and against the thread. The hole closes. Dry it out and the fibres stay in that new arrangement.
Synthetic canvas does not do this, which is why synthetic swags come seam sealed from the factory and cotton ones do not.
The method
Pick a day with a dry one behind it. You need the swag completely dry before it goes away, and a damp swag in a bag becomes a mouldy swag in about three days.
- Set the swag up outside as if you were sleeping in it. Pegged out, canvas under tension. Seasoning a swag in a heap does not work, because the seams need to be in their working position.
- Wet it thoroughly with a hose on a spray setting. Not a jet. You want rain, not pressure. Work over the whole thing, and go back over every seam twice.
- Look for water coming through on the inside. That is what you are here for. Keep wetting until the outside is saturated.
- Leave it to dry completely. A full day of sun and breeze, or two in poorer weather. Turn it if one side is in shade.
- Repeat once. The second wetting closes what the first one missed, and it is the step most people skip.
If it rains hard while the swag is out and pegged, that counts. Rain is the ideal seasoning, and it costs nothing.
Are swags waterproof
Canvas swags are water resistant, not waterproof, and the difference matters when it is 2am.
Water resistant means the fabric sheds rain and dries out. Waterproof means a sealed membrane that lets nothing through in either direction, including your breath. A sealed swag would run with condensation by morning. Canvas breathes, which is why you wake up dry inside one and clammy inside a cheap synthetic tent.
A well seasoned canvas swag will hold out sustained rain. It will not hold out a swag pitched in a hollow that fills with water, and no fabric will.
Do not touch the canvas from the inside in rain
The old advice about not touching a tent wall in the rain is real, and it applies here. Pressure at a point breaks the surface tension holding water out and starts a wick. Keep bedding off the wet canvas and it stays out.
Reproofing later
Seasoning is a one-time job. Reproofing is maintenance, and it is a different thing.
Cotton canvas is treated at the mill with a water repellent finish, and that finish wears with sun, abrasion and dirt. When water stops beading and starts soaking in as a dark patch, it is time. On a swag used a dozen nights a year, that is somewhere between three and eight years.
Clean it first, because reproofing dirt just seals dirt in. Cold water, a soft brush, no detergent. Dry it completely. Then a canvas reproofer on a dry, still day, worked in evenly, seams first.
What actually kills a swag
Not rain. Mould, and putting it away damp.
Cotton is a natural fibre and mould eats it. A swag rolled up wet after a wet trip will be spotted within a week and weakened within a month, and once mould is in the weave it does not come out. If you have to pack up wet, unroll it the moment you get home, even if that means over the fence in the dark.
The second killer is sun. Long term UV breaks cotton down. Store it out of the light.
Our bedroll
Our Traditional Bedroll Swag is Australian made canvas cut and sewn in our Tasmanian workshop. It arrives unseasoned, because seasoning it here and shipping it to you would achieve nothing. An hour with a hose and a dry weekend is all it takes, and it is the only maintenance the canvas asks for in the first several years.