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.