Since we've been snow and ice bound here all day, I had a chance to finish up my first MYOG pack. It's a pretty basic design — four panels + bottom out of lime green X-Pac + a 9 inch purple silnylon collar. I used some 1 inch purple nylon webbing, black 1 inch nylon webbing for accents, and 1.5 inch for a beefier waistbelt. Altogether, it came out pretty loud!
The waistbelt is padded using pieces cut from a Z-lite pad I shortened to torso length. The shoulder straps are padded using 1/4 inch EVA foam kindly provided to me by a BPL member.
The white mesh is from an old running shirt I bought at a second-hand store. Very stretchy and seems durable, but will probably pick up the dirt. The bottoms of the side pockets are made of some extra gore-tex I had hanging around.
The final weight is 15.2 ounces, although I will probably add a sternum strap which will bump it up to a pound or so. I weighed the pieces for the pack body (just sides and bottom of X-Pac) which weighed only 4 ounces. The entire waistbelt weighed 3 ounces. Forgot to weigh the shoulder straps!
Dimensions are 11 x 6.5 x 30 inches, which is roughly comparable to a ULA CDT or MLD Prophet. It's frameless right now, since I've wanted to try a frameless pack, and I have my Z-lite flat against the back panel, which seems to be supporting the load well.
The toughest part of making this pack was the shoulder straps–I sewed them together and turned them inside out, then had a devil of a time getting the padding down into them. Avoid this if at all possible! My sewing machine is also a tiny thing — actually a travel-sized machine — so it won't even sew through two layers of webbing. Had to do more of it by hand than I wanted to, but that's alright.
The best part is that the pack fits me like a glove.
Happy Gear making!
