Hawai'i Pack, Part II

[Here's the first post]

After coming up with a pattern that I was happy with...or at least would do...I've started sewing the pack.
And I'm almost done with the back panel. The stitching's a little slapdash, but it's strong.

X-Pac & 1000d Cordura nylon. I'm shooting for a pack size of 14x7x33...so they'll let me on the plane. (This'll still have to be checked, of course.)
There's a pocket on the outside for the cross piece of the frame. It closes with Velcro. I had a picture of the pocket open, with the aluminum poking out, but I don't know where it went. Ha.
This piece distributes the weight from the vertical stays to the two loops that'll connect the pack with the waist belt.

There're the two heavy duty loops at the bottom that'll mesh with the waist belt.
And below that is part of the bottom of the pack. I was going to make a round bottom piece, but decided that it would take too much time to design and sew, so we're getting a rectangle for a bottom instead. Making it even simpler...the way I like it.
Tri-glides for closure straps, ladderlocks for load-lifter straps, and unfinished shoulder straps...for shoulders.
After I attach the belt I'll figure out how long to make the shoulder straps, and add the pads 'n' things. I'll be using the same design I used on the last backpack I made: here.
Here's the inside of the back, with stays in place.
Here're the little booties they slip into.
And the closure system at the tops of the stays. And there's a piece of webbing there for a water bladder pouch.
Okay, what's next:
>I'm going to make the hip belt. This might take a bit, 'cause there's lots of measuring involved. That's what takes the most time with these projects: all the rulerwork. But at least I have the shape worked out already. I just took my old waist belt and slimmed it down a bit. That thing took so long to design...whew.
>After I get the belt made, and make sure my pack-belt connection idea works out, then I'll sew the lumbar pad onto the pack.
>Then it's just attaching all the compression straps and finishing the shoulder straps, and other bits & pieces. And then it's done. Piece of cake, right? Ha.

Till next time.

Leif Labs Hat Action

Move Over, Betsy Ross

...Leif Labs is in town.
No, not really.
Anyway, I just made this for the CoMo Polo kids. It's about 3'x5' and made out of like a 70 denier ripstop nylon I bought at JoAnn fabrics.
It's an effing nightmare to do applique work with. So light and slippery. Sheesh.
I used a fairly wide zigzag to keep it from unravelling...'cause it's this fabric's wont to fray. But since it's so light it curls up in the zigzag. So I had to go back and stitch through the zigzag stitching to flatten it out. Pain. In. The. Ass. Ha. Whatever. It turned out pretty well.

By the bye, CoMo Polo is hosting the 7th Midwest Polo Champeenships round November 7th. Check out their Website for more info.

Goodbye Scissors

Just got this hot momma in the mail. It's an electric fabric cutter...also known as a round cutter, rotary shears, electric minishear, hand-held electric fabric cutter, laser scissors...you know.
Anyway, it cuts through Cordura like nobody's business.
I'm about to start a big project with a lot of cutting, so I thought I'd save my wrist and some time and get one of these for rough cutting.
This was the cheapest one I could find, as I'm not going to be doing that much production. This one was about 70 bucks. They go way up after that.
You can get 'em most any place that sells industrial sewing machines. I got this one from Westchester Sewing on the Web. They had the cheapest price, and the most helpful info.
This model seems to be rebranded by different shops. And it definitely comes from somewhere in the Orient, as evinced by the sweet instruction manual:
"1. The cutting brade should be iubicated with the machine oil of grade 30, once a day."
So cute!
Anyway, this seems to be a knock off of Consew's 503K: http://www.consew.com/public/default.aspx?pageid=3 Look under Cutting Machines.

And the dopest-looking machines are from Eastman: http://www.eastmancuts.com/Products/Product.aspx?product_id=29

Of course, they're like 400+ bucks. Damn.

Trouble +

While I'm waiting for my sewing machine pedal to cool down, let me tell you about something weird that just happened when I was sewing.
So there I was just stitchin' along, minding my own business, when my machine stopped feeding. (This is my li'l 70s Kenmore machine.) I was like, Holy shit, what's going on! So I looked at it closer and saw that the presser foot wasn't going down with the feed dogs. [There should be constant pressure on the fabric from the foot, otherwise it won't advance when you sew.] So I took the cover off and looked around but I couldn't really see anything--everything's so smashed together in there, it's hard to see. But I knew something was probably catching 'cause the presser foot lever didn't have any tension on it and it was kinda wobbly. So finally, after looking in there with a flashlight, I saw that part of the presser foot shaft was catching on a loose screw. The screw for the foot lever had worked itself loose after lifting the foot a million times. So I tightened it...after having to remove the light housing. And that was that.
Sewing machines can be finicky creatures sometimes.
There's the loose screw there, right above my screwdriver blade. What was catching was that box right above it, with the two screws.
Bam! Make that tight.

Something similar has happened with my needle-feed 111 machine. Though that was my own doing. I raised the outside presser feet (the ones that just go up and down) a li'l bit so I would have more clearance when stitching from a lot of layers to a few, and all was good till I sewed over something really thick. Then the machine locked up. And I'll tell you, when an industrial machine just locks up, it's fucking scary.
So I figured out that my raising the feet just a little bit, like an eight of an inch or less, caused the rotating bit on the thread take-up arm to knock against a piece on the presser foot shaft...but only when sewing over really thick material.
A pretty lame design in my opinion, but there's so few space in that part of the machine and so many moving parts in a needle-feed walking-foot machine, I suppose it's hard to avoid.

Anyway, on to cooler things:
Just got this in the mail today. Isn't it beautiful?
It's a bunch of 1" nylon webbing that I use for binding. Mil-W-4088, Type 2, Class 1a.
I'm trying out a new source. But since it's a mil-spec it should be pretty much the same as the webbing I'm using now, me thinks.
I ordered this from Bally Ribbon Mills, in Bally, Pennsylvania...not too far away from Reading, PA.
Peep at their site here: BallyRibon.com Check out their section on 3D weaving. Awesome.

If you're looking for this webbing by the yard, you can get it from ParaGear.
Okay, back to sewing...

Glen!

Let's go skiing!
This is probably the stiffest bag that I've ever made. #10 Waxear waxed cotton lined with acrylic-coated polyester. 15x12", 13x4" bottom.


I used my zigzag walking foot machine to sew the two pieces together before I put the binding on and it made this mark in the wax. It should wear out eventually.

Put That on Your Shoulder

Here's a shoulder pad I just made. This sucker's goin' on a Timbuk2.
15x2.5x~0.5" Fleece lined, mother approved.

The piece of bike tube is to keep it from slipping too much. Aw yeah.