Sunday 8 October 2017

20L Zipper Pack


For various reasons I haven't posted much over the last year or so but I've been keeping myself busy either wandering around the hills or working on make your own gear projects. It was just over a year ago I posted about my first attempt at a making a pack and I've been making a lot of packs recently but haven't really posted much about them online, other than the odd photo on a couple of forums. I recently finished this 20L zipper style pack so I thought I'd make a start at catching up with a few posts about what I've been up to. 

I'm afraid there are no prizes for correctly guessing this pack was modelled after the beautiful Laufbursche PACKsack PLUS. I've long been an admirer of Laufbursche packs and one of the first UL style packs I lusted after was the Huckepack. I very nearly bought the PACKsack PLUS when it was first launched but regrettably didn't go through with it. Unfortunately due to the ill health of Mateusz at Laufbursche the shop is currently closed for an uncertain period of time, you can read more on his story here - https://www.ilovelaufbursche.de.


I've been thinking about making a zipper style pack for some time but never quite sat down and got on with it, I hadn't even really decided to make this one  until a couple of weeks ago whilst I was making some shoulder straps for a different pack. As I was going through my fabrics I realised I had quite a few offcuts of Dyneema X so I thought I'd make an additional set of straps using some of the offcuts and then find a use for them at a later date. This kind of spiralled as I realised I very nearly had enough to make a small pack, albeit from four different colours, the next day this pack was born.


The shoulder straps use 10mm CCF foam and 3d mesh on the underside which might seem a little overkill for the loads it's ever likely to carry but should make for a comfortable ride regardless of what I manage to cram inside. I've used various shoulder strap pockets in the last few years and find them super useful but have never really been happy with the bulk and swing of aftermarket pockets you attach to the straps. After using the Pa'lante Simple pack over the summer I've come to love the built in stretch mesh pockets so added some to this build.


Feature wise there's not much else to the pack really, no frame of any kind, no sternum strap and no hip belt, clean and simple. There's a couple of decently sized elasticated side pockets for water bottles etc, simple 2mm cord side compression adjusted using LL3s and a #5 water resistant zip for access. 

I used a 44cm (17.3 inch) torso length with the total height and width being chosen to allow the pack to accommodate sections from a Thermarest Z-lite, the depth was then chosen to dictate the overall main compartment volume of 20L. Overall weight 250g on my scales.


Matt

This pack has also been discussed on Reddit and Trek-Lite.

1 comment:

  1. Great colours and design. 250g?! Dang that's light even for a 20l pack.

    ReplyDelete