August 7, 2017
I recently was invited by my friend and fellow sophisticate, Tim Cox, to engage in a brief fishing expedition on his boat at Acton Lake in Hueston Woods in Ohio. When we got there, I was surprised to see hat the canvas covering that Tim had for his boat was in a tatters, and there was evidence of vast amounts of animal activity and water damage.
Not to worry though, for Tim is an old jack of all trades, and he has a sewing machine in his shop which he uses to do his own upholstery. I was surprised though when he dragged the old and tattered mess to his shop and rebuilt it with pieces of canvas that he took from a heap of surplus Army tents that he had piled up in a corner of his basement.
"Best upolstry material they is!" he said energetically as his fat little fingers pulled and snipped, snipped and pulled at the coarse green fabric. I watched mesmerized as a new canvas cover took shape under his masterful expertise.
While this was all going on, I engaged old Tim in conversation and asked him what all he used the old Army tent canvas for. Here are some surprising uses that he told me about that you must consider for yourself.
1. Upholstery I had noticed before that most of Tim's cars were upholstered with canvas seats, but it had never occurred to me that this was because he was doing it himself... it just seemed so fitting that a guy like him had canvas car seats that I assumed he found them that way.
2. Boat covers Ok, I'm kind of cheating here since both of these first two were covered in the narrative above, however, I have to say that this is an ingenious use of the old canvas fabric, and it saved him hundreds of dollars because the surplus tents were actually purchased in a lot for just pennies per yard of material.
3. Pool covers Tim is the owner of a pool cleaning company in the Florida Keys, and as such he has plenty of clients who are always on the lookout to save a buck. He's manufactured lots of custom pool covers from old canvas duck to fit pre-existing fixtures.
4. Car covers. This last one isn't from Tim, I figured this one out myself. I'm not going to tell him about this idea, I'm going to start trying to make some of these for myself.