onion bag backpack

I have one of Lynne Wheldon’s “about a pound” packs and it’s not much more than a sturdy “onion bag” with some comfy shoulder straps, load lifters and a sternum strap

How about this I picked up at a dive shop while looking for silicone grease.

Only 40$

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/parkinson1963/481.jpg

Okay try this link

Cool… but how much does it weigh?

p.s. clickable link :)

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o131/parkinson1963/481.jpg

How about this?

Actually… as cool an idea as this seems to me… I think that such a bag would be much heavier than say… a cuben fiber bag. Mesh is actually quite heavy material per ounce.

15oz, not superlight but 1.5 pounds lighter than my current pack.

Same weight as the LWG mesh pack my friend has but half the price.

but cuben fibre costs a ton (25$/yd).

To make a cuben fibre pack would cost roughly, 50$ fabric, 10 webbing, 10 bits and pieces. total 70$ with out labour, for a savings of roughly 8 oz.

I usually go the cheap but slightly heavier route.

Eg homemade 8×10 tarp 10$ (weight 18oz)
vs silshelter 150$ 16oz

There is quite a long thread on a very similar topic started by Brett B. Later in the thread Hideaki Terasawa offers a pack made by his mother out of packing strapping that is amazingly light and strong. I’ve been long thinking of a pack that relies on its “exoskeleton” for the pack, with a soft, pack liner interior. Since so many ultralight packs use mesh pockets on the outside, why not just, as Channing Sze suggests, make the entire pack out of that mesh (in my case I’m thinking of either woven bamboo or packing straps), eliminate the pack body entirely, and use the space between the pack liner and the outer mesh as the “pockets”? It’s much easier to pack and can be very cheap to make.

that’s pretty much what i was thinking about. it can be comforting to know that one’s ideas aren’t novel.

i was thinking the other day of what a backpack did. basically, it holds things together and it holds things up.

a plastic bag can hold things together. all you really need is something to hold things up. i’ve always been impressed by how light and how strong those onion/firewood bags are. feels like twine.

i’m not really sure what mesh would be suitable. one made of spectra would be strong, but the thin cord might cut into the inner plastic bag liner.

My husband and I have been experimenting with mesh backpacks lately. These are great for packrafting and other wet exploits, since you need a drybag inside to keep your critical stuff dry anyway, the mesh won’t hold water, and good mesh can handle bushwhacking where light fabric can’t.

However, one key thing is how the mesh deforms when you stretch it. My husband’s first mesh pack was very onion-bag like (people often asked if it was a laundry bag). When this bag got stretched, the square holes in the mesh could deform into elongated diamonds, and when stretched further, the holes closed completely. (I hope this makes sense – if not, I can try and draw it).

The result was that it wouldn’t hold a shape at all. Much much worse than a simple nylon bag. This is a big problem if you don’t want a super heavy frame on the pack.

Now we’re working with a stiffer black mesh (can’t remember what it’s called at the moment), and that’s working much better. Just something to look out for in any mesh you want to build a pack from.

-Erin
http://www.groundtruthtrekking.com/WildCoast.html

Excellent point about the price of Cuben Colin! Not that I’m made of money… because I’m not!… but I sometimes focus just on weight and forget about cost.