MYOG wet rib bottle and essentials pouch

[Greg Pehrson]

Inspired by Wanda Rice’s tutorial here I made my own “wet rib,” the bottle (“wet”) & accessory pocket that lies “against your ribs” originally made by Dana Design and subsequently Mystery Ranch.

I’ve long wanted to try the wet rib, but Danas are super expensive on eBay, and the Mystery Ranch version is often out of stock. The idea appealed to me because I really have to push myself to drink enough water in my everyday life, and, especially in winter, hiking with the bottles in insulated zippered pouches slows down my hydrating. The design seemed like it would really facilitate easy water access.

At a local thrift store, I found an “adventure purse”–the kind of thing you might buy in an Audubon Society gift shop to hold a water bottle, your binoculars and some snacks for an afternoon of birding. It was $4. The most interesting thing about it was that the water bottle holder was lined with Reflectix!

The pocket as purchased was 8 ounces. I cut off the wide shoulder strap, replaced the branded rubber zipper pull with cord, and cut out the snaps on the back so they wouldn’t become chafe points. I covered up the holes they left with Tenacious Tape. The subsequent weight was 4.9 ounces. There’s still some potential weight savings from cutting out excess pocketing on the accessory pouch but I’ll wait to see what I use before removing any more.

I bought some of the quick-attach sternum strap buckles Wanda suggests. I reversed the orientation from Dana’s original design, which has the accessory pocket attached to the shoulder strap with two buckles and the water bottle pocket clipped to the other shoulder strap with a single buckle. My thinking on this was that the water bottle would be the heaviest thing I’m carrying and so it would be more stable if it was anchored on the inside with two clips instead of one.

The accessory pouch had a rubber headphone port, which I covered with Freesole glue to prevent water ingress.

I used a bright red piece of webbing to connect the side-release buckle to the quick-attach sternum strap buckle, since it’s the smallest, easiest-to-lose piece of the kit.

The rib lies flat and secure at a jaunty angle, and holds a 16oz HDPE Nalgene. It’s super easy to access. I’m thinking I may put a few essentials in an inner pocket and then use the larger pouch as a feed bag.

I like it! I’ll report back after use.

 

[Mike B]

Great project. I see things like this at the thrift stores occasionally and need to think a little farther out of the box on what is possible given a little ingenuity and sewing.

 

Thanks for the idea

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