Bushcraft Equipment: Swedish LK35 Backpack

Description

A review of the Swedish LK35 backpack. Affordable yet solid and comfortable wit ha few simple changes.

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Video Transcription

hi there guys is Mike from mcq bushcraft here and I'm just out shooting a video today and in this video I wanted to show you a backpack that I bought about a month and a half ago who have been using for a month and a half it's a pack that's really no stranger to the bushcraft community out there are a lot of people use them and recommend them and they're incredibly cheap so they're perfect for beginners but you can buy them for probably under 20 pounds they're very very robust they're ex-military and you can usually get the money shoot for about 15 pound and you can make a couple of changes to them that will really just bring them into their own and make them an incredibly versatile backpack they're actually comfortable for heavy loads and long tracks and those are the changes I wanted to show you today so I have the packages here in front of me and this is the Pat life and running with for about a month and a half and you can see it's a military backpack a Swedish backpack and it's got a steel frame coated in a sort of plastic II casing there to stop it corroding and this pack is a Swedish elk a 50 and there's a variety of different packs in that kind of category there's an elk a 35 and an elk a 70 as well which is a lot bigger than this the elk a 70 is quite a popular one and you can buy them in canvas or leather or in a slightly more modern materials like I've got here which is like a ballistic nylon and you know I really went for this simply because in the damp conditions I mean it just really suits me better to have a pack that's going to withstand that moisture and a canvas and leather pack although it's lovely and it's nice and traditional it probably just won't be as practical from where I'm coming from you'll see that this has two size pouches and these are not standard these are two modifications that I've made I've Stan stitched these on with some very strong or point seven five mil polyester thread just along the edges there and still put my hands down so I can still put an axe down the side if I really want to or tuck any kind of thing in my folding 410 actually slips down there which is quite nice if the inner compartments are very full it will not slip down there so I have to strap along the top or along the bottom you can see that the pouch is done up by these adjustment buckles here and I quite like this because it allows you to really overfill the top of the pack if you wish and you can really pack it out so you can get a bit more letter edge there off of the pack but he's come undone there and the pack opens up and you have like a hatch lid just fits down doesn't seal in any other way there are no zips there are just buckles and these very very strong straps and if we follow these straps down to the bottom you'll see there that they go underneath these little bits of male there and you can completely take them off a lie often strap a wool blanket underneath here you can even fit an entire sleep system underneath there and it wouldn't be too hard to increase the length of these straps even more to put something even bigger on there so the pack comes with quite a lot of versatility in carrying things on the outside and the same case for the lid which we'll have a look at at the moment if you look at the base just here you'll see a small loop and that small loop can be used in conjunction with this here at the top I can take my axe and slide it down and strap it on through here you can even have quite a large axe as well like a 26-inch felling axe down there even a shovel something along those lines can be put through we have a look at the lid there you'll see that the lid has strapping on as well and again really really generous in the amount of structure you get these can be easily increased so you could have an entire sleep system on top there's a lot of capabilities for carrying things on the outside you just have to bear in mind if you're in damp conditions like me some things we need to go in dry bags you can see before we get in the inside we've got this sort of adjustment tab here which is quite strange but it does work and it's like a wedge so you pull that and then wedge the piece of metal down and it won't go any further take the wedge drag and there it is it's simple but that's not going to fall apart on you is studied together and it's made of steel there's fairly good quality going inside the pack you can have a water bladder in there you can see got a fairly large elasticated area there to put a water bladder I've put some foam in mine and around the edge and it just helps stop things pushing into the side of the nylon and puncturing them if I really overload the pack but also this piece of foam doubles up for me as a pillow when I'm out camping and also when I'm kneeling down to save my knees getting battered on the cold ground so I usually have it lined along the outside to do a variety of jobs but you can see it's got quite a lot of space in it you can fit a fair amount in there you know is a bucket pack see you need to organize things in your own manner it's not compartmentalize unless you start putting a ton of pouches on the side of it but provided you don't mind that it's an excellent pack if you turn the pack around you can see the steel frame and attach to that steel frame these straps here which is just threaded around the steel frame and around the base as well and the nice thing about that is you can change these if you wish you can buy padded ones and replace them with that I don't really see the requirement for padded ones once you put this waist belt on because all of the weight sits on your hips just above your bum and it's very very comfortable and these all they all these really do is just keep the pack flat to your back they don't really pull down on you so it's a very nice balanced pack and I will load this up and show you in a moment

one thing I should mention about these adjustment straps is they're very user-friendly you just pull them like this to tighten them and grab this tab to loosen so they can be loosened very very easily without sort of having to faff around with them unthreading any of this webbing right if we loosen these up and get them out of the way we'll just take a look blast belt here or this kidney belt this is a u.s. kidney belt you can pick these up off eBay for a fiver sometimes for pains and if we look at the frame you can see at the bottom where that U is is like a triangular piece just there that these straps attach T for the main straps on the backpack and various other things hook crammed it as well to keep the pack against the frame but when I first got this and this blast belt came with it the blast part was up here just wrapped around the bars and it could slip up and down and it really was in the wrong place for my body I needed it to be lower because I needed it to actually rest on my hips and for the full weight to be on my hips to make that happen and to keep it sturdy so actually you almost have it facing down at an angle like that you have to pull the blast belt through these triangles on either side like this you can see it a bit clearer on that one and then on the inside you can either tie them together because the blast belt comes with these d-rings here that you know you can pull through and I've just used some of the excess webbing I got with the pack to actually thread them through and overall that's just transform this pack I mean the pack alone is brilliant they are very comfortable once you add that you can really start utilizing the 50 litre load and and so on with the pack and it's fantastic these pouches here have been stitched on fairly simply these are Swedish webbing pouches you can get these off eBay for about nine quid for two it comes with a complete webbing set as well and water bottle holder and there have a very very good quality the same quality as the pack and you know we can pop one of those opening except for a little med kit there torture hygiene kit at the base that always really stays in there I don't need to to bother with that and the thing about a comfortable pack is you can leave it full and go for a walk with it and not really notice the weight which is ideal and you don't have to unpack before day trips and just makes everything a lot more in a convenient in that respect but these pouches are plastic bag act so they've got a hard sheet of plastic in the back of the pouch and that's one thing to bear in mind the thread I've used is naught point seven five mil polyester thread which is generally used or marketed at leather stitching and I've dyed it black with a sharpie so after I've stitched the white thread through I've just held the sharpie against it you can wet the thread first hold the sharpie against it and it'll absorb all the ink and and make it black and I always do the front first so match the front with that seam and the back should then taper up a slight angle getting wider at the back and you can just get this same setup off of ebay for a very very cheap price and it just means you can have a medkit there and some tools there or even a little bit of food on a day hike and it's all really a boost about convenience but let's put it on see how it looks so if I put this on first of all you'll see the main straps a very very loose because they're so easy to loosen so if you've done them up quite tight you can just pull these tabs and they just come undone but like the actual waist belt is still a very very comfortable pack you know it still sits very well but obviously a lot of the weight is on the shoulders so if you start really overloading the pack for maybe you're going out for a week or something along these lines it's going to get quite uncomfortable for long walks

but this waist belt really really transform that more usually just get that upright and you'll see there that suddenly all the weight has disappeared from my shoulders point where I can loosen the pack and the pack should pivot just above my bum there so you can see there it's just pivoting and that and these straps are really just keeping the pack against my back and I've got a great deal of space say even with all this bulky warm gear on I've got on today

you know I've walked a couple of miles out here I've not been sweating too much but my knee it was a fairly steady pace so that blast felt really transformed you can see it really holding that on there and then I just tighten these up a little bit you know I'll just loosen them slightly and you know it just keeps them keeps everything kind of linear so you know it's not pulling me backwards like that there we go so an amazingly comfortable path a lot too whiny that's not much wider than me really a part of them side patches come past my arms a bit and very very impressed with it and it really loaded up and most of the people I've been out with I've sort of shown it to put it on and gone blimey I didn't expect it to be that comfortable but do you notice that you know I'm about 510 a fairly slim guy and you got these bars on the back of the frame you know if you've got a full-on massive back on you know you're built like a brick then you know these bars might stick into you and they might be uncomfortable so it's certainly not a a one pack fits all if you're around about my size then you know you sort of average build then it'll probably fit you very very well and if you do the the mod down the bottom there you'll be really pleasantly surprised and it'll be a good pack say you know do you think about that but I hope you've enjoyed this video and this little take on the LK 51 thing I should actually mention before I am the video is a lot of the LK 50s and LK 35 s get mixed up and some of them get sold as 50s some get sold as LK 35 s because the packs look really similar and I think they're mounted on the same frame so sometimes you can buy an LK 15 you get 35 you know if you're sort of buying off of ebay and things like that then you might just want to double check usually you get a date stamp in the top lit made by hag lofts you make the pack and if you've got the haglöf stamp and the date stamp in the top of the lid of your LK 50 and it's generally an LK 50 because they those are the people who manufactured them this is what I've read anyway and there's a lot of discussion on it on forums and things say you might want to do your homework before you do it by but the LK 35 is still a great pack with the same capabilities just slightly smaller and you can obviously compare them side-by-side online and sort of have a look at which one you want but thanks again for watching guys and I hope you enjoyed this video just thought I chew this pack in the mod so I've done because obviously if you're new out there to bushcraft you're looking for a pack you're looking at all these expensive backpacks out there it's not necessary something like this will do just fine

so take care and I hopefully will see you in another video cheers guys