Bushwalk Australia

Wanted a new daypack for packrafting/flyfishing and ultralight overnight walks, so recently made one from cuben.

I've designed it largely with fly fishing and packrafting in mind - I've made 5 other rucksacks of similar design previously out of various nylons, but wanted to shed a little more weight on a recent NZ trip - the paddle blades sit nicely in the back pocket, or in the side pockets, and the shafts, or a spare fly rod, sit on one or other side of the rucksack, held in place by a simple piece of cord and a guy line slide.

Pack is made mostly from 0.75oz cuben, with heavier (?1.4-2oz) cuben on the bottom. Seams have been sewn, and taped over with cuben strips on double sided bonding tape. The reason for taping the seams was more for reinforcing them than for waterproofing. Cuben sews very easily, but it needs biggish stitches, and the tape disburses the strain on the seam onto the fabric. The tape is not strong enough to hold seams on a rucksack, unlike a tarp which can be made with tape alone. Total weight of rucksack is 270g!

Harness was pinched off an old day pack. Harness/shoulder straps are not that hard to make, but it was easier to use something I had. Mesh back with zipper along the top allows some CCF to be inserted if desired. Top pocket is curved, and covers a simple drawer cord closure

Dimensions are tapered 24-27cm wide, tapered 19-22 cm deep, and 65 cm high (to the drawer cord), making a rucksack about 55 cm high when the cord is drawn tight, so about 28l capacity.

I can easily fit everything for a comfortable 2-3 night trip in summer.

Andrew A

Very impressive Andrew, nice work. I'll be interested to hear how it holds up after a bit of use. Are you intending to go through much scrub with it?

Thanks Foottrack. It's major use is going to be NZ wilderness rivers. We tend to be out for 8-9 days, and use a day pack most days - usually take packrafts/lunch/spare clothing, and fish all day, then raft back down to where we are camped for the night, before packing everything in a bigger rucksack,,and hauling it up to our previous high point. Whilst much of our walking is "off track" the scrub is not that woeful, and much of our travels are along bouldery river beds anyway. The cuben does need to be nursed, and wouldn't be suitable for thick scrub bashing.

A

Lovely work again Andrew.

Looks good mate.

Did you make the pack body out of one continuous piece?

Thats a fantastic bit of work! Well done

Looks fantastic.

Thx.

The pack is made from several fabric pieces. Given that I wanted side and front pockets, I needed to sew through the fabric anyway, so there was no point trying to do it in one piece. You obviously can minimize the seams, and the tape seals them very well - the difficult bit to waterproof with tape is where any webbing inserts into the main pack body - not impossible.

Going to start on another down quilt tonight made from Simon's argon fabric. Hopefully more pictures soon.

A

Really nice, Andrew. It reminds a bit of this pack, although the addition of a lid with a pocket seems well worth the additional weight.

What sort of load capacity, at a level that is acceptably comfortable, do you imagine it has?

Probs after recent post about MYO cuben rucksack, I need to do a quick modification to this to carry skis fir first weekend in August on Bogong.

This weekend will be busy! Have to finish Bothy bag, modify this pack, get my *&%$#! together for the following weekend, and do my BAS. Erk.

Just some late feedback...

Design/manufacturing just wasn’t up to it.

Used it for 10 days in Fiordland, NZ, and it hung in there for the trip, but I recently looked at it with the view to repair, and it ain’t going to be.

Main issue was seam failure. Sewing cuben seems to increase risk of failure. My previous experience with only taping it leads to the same. There must be some sort of intermediary. There’s a whole lot involved in this, including needle size and type, stitch length, thread size, etc.

I’m going to make the same pack with a lightweight X pack fabric, and see how much better it fairs. I think having some beefier fabric to sew will make a big difference.

Will post, in due course.

Andrew A