Buttered JortsEver have a post that you just know is gonna do good, whenever you actually have time to post it?
Gonna be repairing the chest strap on my backpack by modifying it to use a new buckle salvaged from a strap I haven’t used in 5 years and will probably never use, so that I can have better fit while biking.
For context, I believe these were Duraflex SJ Lite buckles, 3/4”, though it’s possible I’ve got the size or model wrong. The side cracked and retention went out the door.
My bag has a concealed MOLLE field behind a zip-up cover panel, which doubles as an expandable open-sided pocket, courtesy of these anodized aluminum G hooks. It was meant for holding a tactical helmet or some such nonsense, where the object would be too large to squirt out the side as long as the strap the hook is on was pulled tight.
I’ve never loved exposed MOLLE, because it screams either “mall ninja” or “.mil”, and since I’m not the latter I must be the former. And I’m not tacticool enough to need a ballistic helmet so… this feature never really fit me.
For starters, I tried fitting the hook in the loop left by the damaged buckle, but it doesn’t quite fit. So I’ve eyeballed how much longer the loop at the end needs to be, and I’ve run the thread through the strap and around the edge to fixate it in this position. Now I can use a razor to cut the original “seam” and test the hook in the larger loop. This will be a bit of #visiblemending since I’m using PowerPro 20lb. braided fishing line as my thread.
Now I need to wait for the kids to fall asleep, and watch a few videos on handsewing this sort of strap work. Pretty confident I could improvise something that’ll work, but may as well do it right or at least right-ish.
The strap the G hook was harvested from ends with a box-stitched tab with Velcro (not pictured) sewn in so that the strap can be rolled to a fixed length. Cut the stitches there, removed the hook, and then rolled it all the way back up and Velcro’d it in place rather than do the complex stitch.
And finally, I resewed the tab of the strap that I took the old buckle off of, it’s unfair how much easier it is to push through the webbing when I’m sewing on top of the picked out machine stitches.
varx/tech@ajn142 I've never had a plain-ass running stitch fail me. Double running stitch if I want it to look nice.
