WoodBow
WKR
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2015
- Messages
- 1,759
Man this diy forum has been mega slow here lately. So i thought id share this recent project to stoke the fire.
A friend of mine is joining our group in CO this year to chase elk and mule deer. He has never done anything like that and has zero gear basically. I didn't want him to run a crappy pack so i told him i would have one for him to use. I have a frame i made a couple of years ago that actually functions very well, but it is a little bit ghetto and bags do not attach to it as easily. Since seeing tartan and some other guys on here build legit frames, i have had the itch pretty bad to build another. When kifaru released the lite frames, it was all the motivation i needed.
I based my design very heavily on theirs. I own a duplex that i used as a starting point for measurements and patterns. That helped a ton. Doing it so far away from season took all of the hurry out of it. I took my sweet time and enjoyed the process. Like every other project i do, design took 3 times as long as execution. Sewing is the easy part. I have 2 industrial sewing machines, a juki ddl552 and a singer 111w153, both which i lucked into for free somehow. I did finally give in and spend $100 for a servo motor. That was money very well spent! I used the juki for all of the lighter work and the singer for sewing through the foam and frame sheet. The sewing on the frame sheet is not what i would like it to be. I was tuning/fighting the machine as i went. By the end it was making beautiful seams. I will probably make another frame sheet because it bothers me that it isn't what it could be. Plus you learn stuff along the way that you want to do differently. My original design differed from kifarus a bit but eventually i realized the merits of their design and followed their lead. Pics are with kifaru composite stays in it. I had some that i took out of my duplex. I run arrows in the kifaru now. Though the kifaru stays match my back profile pretty much perfect, they kill my lower back for some reason. Like a severe cramping pain. They are too stiff to flex around my back when load is applied to the lifters as well. As i torque on the load lifters, they just want to pry the lumbar pad off of my back. I made composite ones for my previous diy frame. I will likely do the same again. It is not pictured here but i did add a brace across the top to stiffen things up. I did 2 arrow shafts bound together in a sleeve. It works fine but i plan to re work that aspect as well. I did not take many process pics but i will try to add the ones i did take.
A friend of mine is joining our group in CO this year to chase elk and mule deer. He has never done anything like that and has zero gear basically. I didn't want him to run a crappy pack so i told him i would have one for him to use. I have a frame i made a couple of years ago that actually functions very well, but it is a little bit ghetto and bags do not attach to it as easily. Since seeing tartan and some other guys on here build legit frames, i have had the itch pretty bad to build another. When kifaru released the lite frames, it was all the motivation i needed.
I based my design very heavily on theirs. I own a duplex that i used as a starting point for measurements and patterns. That helped a ton. Doing it so far away from season took all of the hurry out of it. I took my sweet time and enjoyed the process. Like every other project i do, design took 3 times as long as execution. Sewing is the easy part. I have 2 industrial sewing machines, a juki ddl552 and a singer 111w153, both which i lucked into for free somehow. I did finally give in and spend $100 for a servo motor. That was money very well spent! I used the juki for all of the lighter work and the singer for sewing through the foam and frame sheet. The sewing on the frame sheet is not what i would like it to be. I was tuning/fighting the machine as i went. By the end it was making beautiful seams. I will probably make another frame sheet because it bothers me that it isn't what it could be. Plus you learn stuff along the way that you want to do differently. My original design differed from kifarus a bit but eventually i realized the merits of their design and followed their lead. Pics are with kifaru composite stays in it. I had some that i took out of my duplex. I run arrows in the kifaru now. Though the kifaru stays match my back profile pretty much perfect, they kill my lower back for some reason. Like a severe cramping pain. They are too stiff to flex around my back when load is applied to the lifters as well. As i torque on the load lifters, they just want to pry the lumbar pad off of my back. I made composite ones for my previous diy frame. I will likely do the same again. It is not pictured here but i did add a brace across the top to stiffen things up. I did 2 arrow shafts bound together in a sleeve. It works fine but i plan to re work that aspect as well. I did not take many process pics but i will try to add the ones i did take.