Making your own kit (backpacks)

Any body have any experience making their own packs? To be more specific any body have any experience working with vinyl coated nylon?

I buy all my materials from Outdoor Wilderness Fabrics.

Same as Stagg. I go with Outdoor Wilderness Fabrics. Their coated nylon is polyurethane coated rather than vinyl or silicon. It gives a rubbery feel to the back of it that sometimes doesn't want to feed well through a sewing machine, though I had more trouble with this when sewing with the 2-layer waterproof breathable (gore-tex or similar). If you have a problem with this you can put paper on the outside of the fabric to allow it to feed better then tear the paper away, the stitching creates a perforation that makes this easy. I'd imagine it would be similar with the vinyl coated nylon, but not as much with silnylon as that is coated differently. I do recommend adding another layer to protect the polyurethane, I just use some of the uncoated 1.9oz nylon for this. That being said I did make a bag that I did not add a protective layer and although you can see the polyurethane peeling away, it seems to be fairly waterproof still though I don't use that bag as much any more.

Failed to mention, i'm a brit any suppliers i will have to find my self, i will be steering far away from pu coated nylon stuff delaminates like nothing else.

Not sure if they carry what you're looking for but these are Outdoor Wilderness Fabrics' equivalents over in Europe:

Point North in Anglesey
Pennine Outdoors in North Yorkshire
Extrem Textil in Germany
Shelby in Finland

I haven't taken an inventory of outdoor fabric retail suppliers in a few years so new ones may have popped up but these four are definitely still in operation.

Good luck

PS: PU-coated fabrics come in all sorts. The good stuff doesn't wear off or delaminate nearly so easily. The coating on my 1980 Karrimor Alpinist shows no sign of wearing out. On the other hand, I've seen PU coatings peel off in film and/or crumble off in flakes after 7-8 yrs. Rarely less. In today's throwaway culture, that's long-term durability but I would also be pissed if something I spent a lot of time making myself started shedding PU flakes all over my gear after 7 years.

PPS: I imagine there's all sorts of vinyl-coated fabrics too. If you're looking for haul bag-type material, I'd be very surprised if you found it retail and even more surprised if you could sew it with a home machine.

jktinst wrote:PPS: I imagine there's all sorts of vinyl-coated fabrics too. If you're looking for haul bag-type material, I'd be very surprised if you found it retail and even more surprised if you could sew it with a home machine.

I wouldn't want to sew vinyl there are IMO better ways of dealing it. Finding vinyl coated nylon is surprisingly hard and I may have to settle for vinyl coated polyester, i can only find vinyl coated nylon for bulk purchase and when i say bulk i mean 2000 meter order minimum.

since youre looking for pack fabric. look at XPAC fabrics
XPAC

or you can go with a regular old school 420 D

Pack cloth works pretty well for most uses. Or you could get some Cordura or Ballistics.

Friend is a backpacker, we talked about packs some time ago. He told me that the community consensus was to skip all water proof fabrics and just use water proof liner - think a trashbag. Apparently, the waterproofs work well at keeping wet things wet in the pack, while failing to keep them dry in the rain.

Just saw this post. I built an 30L(ish) alpine pack a couple years ago. I modeled (stole?) the design from a couple different packs and combined the features I liked together into one. I ordered fabric from North Sails, and built it out of a fairly heavy Cuben fiber material (at least heavy by Cuben standards). Cuban fiber fabrics are waterproof and this stuff has been durable enough to deal with being tossed around and abused. That said, I used a dyneema/polyester hybrid for the base of the pack and section that holds crampons. I've also got some detachable straps for it.

I've purchased other fabrics from OWF, which is a great company, but I really like this material from North Sails. I've used the backpack for all kinds of things and it's going strong.

Here's a photo of it after having used it for a few years. It was a fun building project.

-Sick

amarius wrote:Friend is a backpacker, we talked about packs some time ago. He told me that the community consensus was to skip all water proof fabrics and just use water proof liner - think a trashbag. Apparently, the waterproofs work well at keeping wet things wet in the pack, while failing to keep them dry in the rain.

I have been using a sil nylon dry bag for years, they are good but really fragile mine has a leak somewhere in it, it would be fine in even the most torrential rain it's just no longer a true dry bag.

Sickler wrote:Just saw this post. I built an 30L(ish) alpine pack a couple years ago. I modeled (stole?) the design from a couple different packs and combined the features I liked together into one. I ordered fabric from North Sails, and built it out of a fairly heavy Cuben fiber material (at least heavy by Cuben standards). Cuban fiber fabrics are waterproof and this stuff has been durable enough to deal with being tossed around and abused. That said, I used a dyneema/polyester hybrid for the base of the pack and section that holds crampons. I've also got some detachable straps for it. I've purchased other fabrics from OWF, which is a great company, but I really like this material from North Sails. I've used the backpack for all kinds of things and it's going strong. Here's a photo of it after having used it for a few years. It was a fun building project. -Sick

I have considered Cuben fiber but it's just not quite abrasion resistant enough for my needs, i really want to be able to abuse this pack, granite chimneys, hauling, etc, cuben fiber is an awesome material and i will be using it one day, not for this project though, at least not for the main body of the pack.

Agreed. Granite would shred the cuben, especially if you're hauling that pack.

Keep us posted on the project.

Has anybody used Neoprene coated nylon? Would be interested in how abrasion resistant it is.