Making your own gear is a blast. A lot of stuff is much easier to make than you'd expect. And when you make it yourself you can custom-design it to be exactly what you want: this will frequently make your gear lighter, stronger, better-fitting, more functional, and cheaper. It's a win/win proposition, right?
Sigh, no. I've judiciously omitted the hundreds of hours spent designing, redesigning, and re-redesigning gear. I've omitted the hundreds of dollars spent on raw materials that are wasted while you develop sewing, machining, leather-making, or other obscure skills, or that end up in unusable failed prototypes. And all my gear looks ugly!! (The latter is, of course, my own short-coming -- not a general feature of gear-making.)
Below is a list of some of the stuff I've made over the years. I need to deliver a general warning up front: my directions range from totally vague and useless to merely vague and kinda helpful. This is somewhat intentional -- not all of it is from lack of time to write these properly, or lack of good memory for all the details. Half the fun of making your own gear is figuring it out for yourself. As such I've just roughly described my own attempts, provided observations about obvious pitfalls and work-arounds that can potentially save a beginner a lot of sweat and tears, and in some cases pointed you to other resources and background info. If you want cookbook step-by-step instructions you're barking up the wrong tree!
| Backpacking: | Cycling: | Other: | ||||
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backpack sleeping bag bivy sack tarp-tent fleece gear rain gear camp stove |
panniers rack |
solar panel moccasins |
Here are some other general discussions:
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Procurement of materials. Sewing machines. |