Can I use splits for making leather water bottles?

[Grooveski]

Och, what a drag. That was looking great as well.

I lost the last one I made during dipping so know how gutted you must have felt. It's a lot of work to lose it at the final stage.
Not even sure why mine failed. I was really careful with the heat(deep fried a sheath once before) but the moment it went in the wax it just lost it's shape and kind of flopped back to the shape it'd been before being packed out.
At the time I reckoned It'd maybe not been dried out fully. Looked. felt and sounded dry but it'd only been drying for a day rather than the three days that the others were sitting before I got round to dipping them. I wondered if maybe there was still too high a moisture content through the leather.

Ayway. Sorry to hear it.

 

[mountainm]

Not even sure why mine failed. I was really careful with the heat(deep fried a sheath once before) but the moment it went in the wax it just lost it's shape and kind of flopped back to the shape it'd been before being packed out.
At the time I reckoned It'd maybe not been dried out fully. Looked. felt and sounded dry but it'd only been drying for a day rather than the three days that the others were sitting before I got round to dipping them. I wondered if maybe there was still too high a moisture content through the leather.

Ayway. Sorry to hear it.

That's exactly what happened with mine. Looked like it'd been trodden on. The wax inside hasn't even begun to melt.

 

[Grooveski]

Don't think I even got as far as wax on the inside. Done just as before and pushed the flask into the wax with an old arrow shaft through the hole. It collapsed as it was being submerged before the wax even spilled into it.
Really sorry for not mentioning it before. I'd blanked it - don't think I've mentioned it to anyone bar Stuart(who was there).
...and like I said, wasn't even really sure what caused it. At the time it did seem dry...

Was the same as the round one in the picture. Same materials and template. Only difference was the time between forming and dipping.
Both times I followed the same procedure of melting the wax, allowing it to cool a touch then slowly bringing it back up to fully molten and dipping straight away.

 

[Albus Culter]

Never made one before (would like to) and only played with leather a bit. However I know that if you dry leather in a low oven you get it to set hard rather than air dry it. So if you stuffed the bottle to form it then dried it with the stuffing still in, would this not make a hard outer to give more strength.
This may be what you did, in which case sorry - new to this as I said. If I can get some leather some time I fancy a go myself. Let us know how you fair next time as I'd be interested to know how you wax it.