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Wool Blanket Sleeping Bag Zipper Mod

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Mitch, Mitchell, Alone, History, Channel, Survival, Nativesurvival.

Tags: native,survival,nativesurvival,gear,repain,mods,wool,blanket,sleeping,bag,zipper,kit,ruck,sack,canvas,vintage,primitive,skills,flint,chert,bopper,biface,pitch,glue,hide,sinew,natural,living,earth,hut,debris,prepp,prepping,bob,god,cache,outdoor,hunting,fishing,outside,hobbies,outdoor recreation,shooting sports,shooting tips,hunting tips

Video Transcription

his mission is a bottle if I'm going to be repairing and modifying some kit don't go away okay this is my vietnam-era elves pack I just want to show you guys quick modification here give you an example I'm talking about this is my compass pouch and I made a adapter here so I could attach it to my strap so that way I don't have to keep my compass around my neck if I don't want and also not to keep it in my rucksack and have to dig through it to get it out so this way I can just pop it off it's right in front I'm good to go so show you guys a close-up of how this looks okay so what I did was I used one of the military attachment clips and I just took a piece of leather and basically copied the patch here on the back of my pouch as a little channel middle for the clip the exact same thing right here so you know little square a piece of leather I just sewed it right on there they could use fishing line this time and it just looks just like that slips right in clips right back in so that's a quick little mod I can take my pouch off keep it on whatever I want to do on the fly no big deal now up here i have a Maxpedition 10 x 4 pouch that i lashed to the elves pack frame okay so what that allows me to do is make this a permanent part of kit that's attached to my frame and obviously I can't actually undo it if that long but you know the things I'm going anywhere it's completely sturdy on here and this allows me to get to my guide designs stainless steel canteen without having to again go through my rucksack or try to carry it somewhere you know in my pocket whatever the case is this way I can actually reach this over my shoulder my right shoulder while my pack is on so I'm marching I can just reach right in let's keep the top open usually like halfway I can just reach right in and just pull my canteen right out and when I'm done with it just put it right back in so just kind of like a canteen holder pretty much so just stuck up click mods and I'll show you guys if you want okay so here's a couple quick gear mods i made this is a quick little pouch I just took a piece of leather a strip rectangle fold it in half and sew sew down both sides it can be simpler let's have some plantain rooting here which we all know has tons of medical attributes as a lot of drawing applications which is why I made it for here because it's powderized this is a very common modification to a slingshot wrist rocket we've all seen this take a medium whisker biscuit right-handed and use zip tie into your slingshot then you get epoxy the whisker biscuit into its housing that way it doesn't flip out when the arrow goes through from the fletchings and you can also shoot rocks with still very common mod is a pouch i made does your mount a little bit its pouch i made it's a got a bunch of ammo flint knapping kit a bunch of flakes and our heads that are three quarters of the way done so i can still kind of customize the size of the arrowhead to the shaft i'm using and what game I want to go out but basically it's just a leather pouch and put some power cord through it let's meet a drawstring pretty simple stuff I probably have a pouch of it on at some point really easy to make my buddies silver fox was the one that got me into making these made an awesome video on Sean Mulhall this channel Silver Fox he's good guy okay this is one of my wool blankets this is the thickest one a on it's 58 thick and right here is a zipper that we're going to be sewing on tonight I'll show you guys are close up okay so here's the edge of my wool blanket so I just picked up an extra zipper sleeping bag zipper at my local surplus store when it costs me a couple bucks and it's actually the perfect length for the whole wool blanket on one side so we decided to not do this by hand although we could and we're just taking a bunch of time it's really not a big deal if it has any problems in the field all obviously repair it by hand basically it's super simple to do you just take these little pins to make it easy you'll have to do this you can do it on the fly but you line it up to where you want it and I just want the cloth from the zipper to be like say half and half half of it underneath to be attached and enough gap so when i move the zipper head by it doesn't touch the blanket so I want it space see that space right there and you just pin it right right in the spot where you want to put it through twice just like that okay so my wife is going to throw this on her sewing machine and just buzzed right down this thing it's going to be real tight and it's going to be like awesome really really nice quality much better than I could do with my hand you know

my hand would work but but the machine it just it just put stitches so close together you know for me to put that many stitches i would literally be here for hours and hours and hours so i was going to get this done so figure to show you guys how this works so it's real simple and this is a pretty cool mod to my wool blanket because a few days ago actually probably last week now it got down to low 30s and really calm came as a little surprise so I want to make sure that my kit is more flexible so I'm going to add the zipper to the edge of my wool blanket and I can keep it unzipped all the time and use it like a normal blanket all day and if I want to use as a sleeping bag then I can zip it together and I'm still going to use my gore-tex bivvy from my military sleep system which I like to use a lot too usually when it's you know zero degrees or lower I as you use my military sleep system has a gore-tex pity on the outside and actually use the extreme cold kind of like their Arctic bag Army's Arctic bag on the inside instead of the two bag standard sleep system and it's kind of a mummy bag and it's rated for like you know negative 30 and it's definitely it definitely functions at negative 30 I mean I've had at zero degrees and I was in my underwear sweating that bag practically I mean I was you know I was breathing in my nose hairs were freezing but I was plenty warm so the problem is is that that kit waste like 13 pounds and i really like a wool blanket better than sleeping bag because it's way more flexible just like my first if it was wool tarp actually use us this wool blanket this exact one and set it up like a tarp and just pour water down and it just beat it up and ran right off you know try that with your sleeping bag good luck so you know i'm trying to modify my kit to be lighter i'm also trying to modify my kit to be more flexible so we're going to be sewing the zipper on the side so we can use it in conjunction with the gore-tex pity which is you know pretty white compared to the whole bag and that way I'll have a waterproof shell with this and then I can actually choose if i put the wool blanket on the outside of the waterproof shell it will protect my waterproof my gore-tex shell from getting amber damage so when Amber is because I sleep right to the fire I mean like a foot and a half for my fire 10 degrees i mean my fire is like right here i'm sleeping right here and there's no rocks nothing i mean blazing blazing fire because it's so cold and Amber's just jump right off into your kit and just put holes right right into your cortex bag and you know that that's a real shame for such a nice piece of kit now because it obviously is no longer waterproof and that's a serious problem so we can do this you can fold your blanket over and put it over your bivi bag so you put your blanket on the outside of your bitty bag and you sleep on the inside of your pity bag so it's like a two piece system and that way the blanket doesn't allow embers to burn through the blanket the wool because it is resistant to flame members to get to your bivi bag which would be on the inside now when i'm going to be say laying in my hammock and i'm near my fire but there's no chance you know or very incredibly slim that an ember is going to land on me and i just want to be a little bit warmer you know because it's like fall it's not freezing out like pretty much right now you know when it's like 40 s I'm going to roll with this and I can put my baby on the outside or not use it at all I can still lay in my hammock and instead of just you know trying to fold my hammock and get comfortable I'm sorry fold my blankie inside my hammock and try to get comfortable and not have a lake stick out and all that stuff this way i can actually zip it up and make a nice like you know kind of sleeping bag out of it and lay that inside my hammock and that will help retain my radiation from my body you know way more effective than just wrapping my bag around me and trying to tuck it in a certain way while laying in my hammock you know if it's all closed in you know zipper shut it's going to be a lot more effective so I think this is really going to be a nice modification and I'm looking forward to trying it out this weekend so pretty much that's it stick a wool blanket and you pin your zipper to it before you actually stitch it and what you do is you just take take the pin out and stitch along the seam where you want it to be and you keep taking the pins out and they just hold it in place for you while you're working on it all right so I'll show you the next step when we get there ok so this stage of my blanket modification is finished so now it has a zipper going down the side and I'm going to just pick up another zipper to put it down the bottom so i have a zipper on the bottom a zipper on the side but it's not cold enough for that yet not really worried about so I'm going to be trying this out this weekend so I'm pretty pumped I think it's going to greatly improve its a its ability to keep out drafts you know I'm always trying to you know tuck this way in that way and trying to get it a certain way under my ankles and everything else and and you know just trying to stop the cold air from getting in you know what better way to do that then zip it together well let's move in genetics lab I appreciate your views your comments in support see you guys in the next one take care

About the Author

NativeSurvival

NativeSurvival

Mitch is a Wilderness Living Skills Instructor, he has been featured on The History Channel's program "ALONE" and written articles for Outdoor Magazines; he owns and operates The Native Survival School which provides woodland living and survival classes, as well as offering quality outdoor gear he's designed. Defintely, he is a master at bushcraft's techniques.

You can find all his videos on his YouTube channel.

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