De Pan

One fascinating bit of traditional gear is the tumpline, basically a strap that placed across the crown of the head transfers weight to the person's frame rather than placing it on the shoulders allowing one to carry more weight with supposedly less effort. Many people curse the humble tumpline and cite that modern advances in building technology have made canoes and gear much lighter, thus rendering the tump system obsolete. Maybe so, but with my summer plans of tripping with the cedar canvas canoe and upper shoulder pain being a constant bother for me, I thought I'd revisit this piece of gear for my own canoe and try to make one for myself.

Cliff Jacobson's book on Expedition Canoeing writes about tumplines but his contracption involves sewing a canvas strip and securing it to the canoe with rubber straps and steel S-hooks...not appealing. Call me a nostalgia freak, but I wanted something a bit less "modern".

This Abnaki or Penobscot tump from the American Museum of Natural History is a woven from basswood cordage shows a typical native design although its construction is way beyond my current skill set.


AMNH Catalog No: 50.1/ 7611 - Tumpline
The forums at FrontierFolk.net have some replica designs of traditional tumps, although nothing I could spot that was meant for canoe portaging. Another design I came across was that on Bob Abrames' voyageur gear page pictured below. A combination of rivetted leather with woven cordage.


Bob Abrames' Voyageur Tump
In the end, I got the inspiration from one of my favourite sites about wildnerness canoeing, The Northwest Woodsman, which has some fantastic videos showing some wonderful backcountry. The emphasis on this site is on basic, traditional bushcraft rather than modern, ultralite techno. This page describing his tumpline has some fantastic pics and details of the general construction. I also came across Don Merchant's Pole & Paddle Company site which also has a page on leather tumps.


NW Woodsman Leather Canoe Tump

Strapped to the centre yoke

Ends can be used to lash in paddles too
The construction looks straight forward enough. I've already got a piece of latigo suitable for the headpiece will have to obtain some 3/4" latigo strips for the ties as well as getting some rivets. Update on this ongoing project soon.

A different feature of the Woods Pack compared to the Duluth style is the use of a single leather anchor for both the top flap straps as well as the tump strap buckles. Less stitching and more simple design. On this pack the leather anchors were still quite sound (top rivet hole compromised), but I thought it was still salvageable if a new rivet was simply inserted a little lower. The worn original straps were replaced with 36" long x 1" wide latigo.


Original leather anchor; New flap strap inserted
In front of this strap would be the tumpline buckle. With a folded strip of thin leather (slightly different colour) and a brass buckles (doesn't match the faded steel of the original), the tump buckle was created. A bit tricky to get all the holes lined up for the rivet. After pounding and setting the rivets in with an additional piece of backing leather on the inside (not shown), I realized I made the strap a bit too long and the buckle kept slipping down too much. Another hole was punched and a brass Chicago screw was mounted to secure the buckle into place. Bit of a mistake, but at least the screw matches the brass buckle so the whole thing doesn't clash too much. For symmetry, I ended up doing the same thing for the other buckle strap.


Tump buckle material; Rivetted into place
Buckle holes were punched in the flap strap at 1" intervals and a test run was done by stuffing the pack up with mounds of dirty laundry. The beauty about this design is that the straps can be placed over the topflap parallel (useful to secure a sleeping pad or other gear to the top of the pack) or cross ways to pack akward shaped items. Here are the two configurations below.

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Parallel straps; Cross over closure
The project is nearly done. All that is needed is the making of a tump for the pack, which should be easy given that I made one already for the canoe. This one will be rivetted however.

Dec 13/09 Update - Pack is now complete. See last stage pics here