Bullet Proof Bushcraft on a Budget PVC Pack Frame

Description

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Tags: PVC Pack Frame,Survival,Bushcraft,Pathfinder,Dave Canterbury,The Pathfinder School

Video Transcription

morning guys Dave cabaret at the Pathfinder school out here to talk a little bit more about the bulletproof bushcraft items I want to back up a little bit and talk about frames or packs for a minute because we're going to talk a little bit about packs in the next video and I think pack frames are an important part of that so I've got an ALICE pack frame here and this is a good common man way to set yourself up with an external pack frame the only problem with these frames is is that they're really not big enough for anything as far as hauling game and things like that on or hauling firewood you don't have a whole lot of room on this thing you can't really put a bedroll underneath it very easily and put a pack on at the same time and that makes it a little bit less and optimal in my opinion so what I'm going to do is I'm going to use these straps off this $20.00 pack frame and I picked up at a gun show it's got the waist pad on it it's got the shoulder straps and all that in really good condition so I'm going to take those off I'm going to build a pack frame out of PVC that hopefully will do the job

stay with me that's what we're going to do today okay guys so let's talk real quick about what materials we need to make this happen well a heat gun is going to come in real handy if you don't have a heat gun you can always heat sand up in a fire or heat sand up on a barbecue grill or in a forge and heat that sand up and pour hot sand into your PVC and that will make it flexible so that you can bend it let it cool down to the shape you want it but a heat gun is a convenient way to do that a hacksaw work for cutting the PVC but I've got an electric jigsaw with a metal cutting blade we use that to cut our PVC with and then I got a marker I've got a tape I've got a drawing of what I want to make and then I've got a socket material over here it's probably enough to make a couple of frames out of I've got some black pipe tips or paint that I'm going to use to paint the frame with I've got some sanding paper over there and then I just got a bag of elbows and tees I've got three pieces of schedule 20 PVC or thin walled PVC then we're going to use to make this frame out of I thought about making out a thick wall PVC but I think the thin wall is going to hold up we're going to test it and find out stay with me guys okay so at this point we've put just two elbows on here with a thirteen inch piece between two elbows on the upper side with a thirteen inch between and right now we're not gluing anything all we're doing is looking at this frame to make sure it's what we want because we want to glue this thing together one time so we're putting everything together

a little at a time and we're just pushing it together like an erector set and once we know exactly what we got what we want and it's going to work for us then we're going to glue it together painting all that stuff so let's look at this compared to an ALICE pack frame okay it's a little wider that's quite a bit taller now we're going to put some tee supports in here as well to help solid just make this frame more solid we've got to figure out where we're going to put our top frame if our straps on our Atlas pack set right there then we're probably going to want our tees about level with that so we're going to cut this thing to put our tees in add is right in here somewhere okay so we've got our first upright going across here now this is where our pack straps are going to go remember here here so now we need to get one down lower support brace between a support brace going down to here with a little bit of a bend in and then we've got to adjust the pack with the heat gun or the pack frame to fit our body butter we'll talk about that as we go so let's get a couple more pieces and parts on here remember nothing's glued together at this point because we want to make sure it's right before we glue anything okay guys so we did put a tee support in here with two tees here with a shorten these two pieces by an inch because we added these connectors as opposed to this top piece trial and error is first one I've ever built so we're going to see how it goes not real happy with the flexibility I've got right here in this shelf but that's okay because I planned on putting another tee here and putting a support right there anyway and I think that's going to make a big difference in that then I've got a contour the pack frame to basically fit my body with the heat gun so let's get this piece in and get this piece going across and we'll figure out what we're a from there okay guys so I made a change here I took those two bends I cut that shelf off about where I was going to put that next t-connector in there I got to look at that bend in that pipe I just didn't like it it just looked weak to me maybe it's because I over bent it didn't get a good radius in there whatever the case may be that PVC I felt was a weakness so just by chopping that off and put an elbow in there I get the exact same effect and I don't have to get fancy with the heat gun at that point so I think now we got a pretty steady shelf right there for putting stuff on we don't really have to worry about too much about putting another support in here like I was talking about doing I think we're okay with just this now so I think we've pretty much got a pack frame this viable now remember I haven't glued anything together yet because I've got to test this thing out and see how it's going to fit my body and maybe do some heating up in the PVC to bend and contour the frame just a little bit but other than that I think we're getting somewhere real quick now okay I do know that I want the top of this thing to Bend out a little bit away from my the back of my head alright because my straps are going to be here I don't want this hitting me in the back of the head so I want to bend this out a little bit so I'm going to lay this pack frame down on a piece of board here just a piece of two by ten or two by eight and I'm going to heat these sides up right here and just push down and bend it up and let it cool so I got the heat gun slung in over here one sided time just heating it up a little bit bowing it out yeah now I'm just gonna hold that down on the table right here until that cools down that should be okay

okay let's get some straps on this thing and see outfits are back I got a sneaking suspicion that this is going to have to bend a little bit as well we're going to find out out here in just a minute okay guys so got this pack on my back and I'm already feeling that center point right there it's pushing riding against the center of my back so that definitely needs to be bent out a little bit the straps themselves are not too bad this shelf is sitting in about the right spot it's just that thing in the center there it's going to have to be bit and then we can try to put a waist strap on and see how that feels you see I'm just using this block as a bending block or bending jig I'm not who is setting anything up special I'm just kind of doing all this on the fly this is really experimental cuz first time I've ever done it so I'm just trying to get this thing bent pretty much even on both sides okay guys that actually feels this absolute ton better feels actually really really good you've been putting over it something bad at all I think we put a waist strap on here see what we're at with that okay guys I went ahead and attached the waist belt the back of the frame yeah feels pretty good that's pretty comfortable no anything get near you know dead my back was gonna bother me too much that's how I thought it's gonna be all right this is all trial and error guys you know you just got to kind of play with this see how it's got feeling I think this is going to be okay with weight on it yeah I think it's going to have a little weight pull now did you get that waist strap cinched up you should be okay there I think I'm gonna go ahead and glue this thing together paint it give it a shot okay guys so we're gonna take our pack frame now and we've got it all done all our bends around everything's the way we want it probably could have actually even bent this bar a little bit may still yet do that before I finished up here I may put a bend in this bar at the top just a master rest of the frame instead of having that straight bar there don't know yet but we've got to take it apart sand each individual area down that's going to be glued together and I'm just going to use some regular whoo just an all-purpose multi PVC cement the glue each one of these joints together and then I'm going to give it a rough sanding and then I'm going to paint it which is some high-temperature black paint to get it you know not white then we'll be ready to put this thing to the test okay so once I've got all of these Porsches glued together I'm just going to go through and make sure that all the joints are as tight as they can get found everything down that way I know everything see is square okay guys so we've got our pack frame pretty well painted up here we dry a really good thing about these pack frames like this is this PVC pack frame weighs probably ounces I mean it doesn't weigh hardly anything and it can be adapted to packs that you already have very easily I showed you how to put Alice pack straps on it so you could put any kind of bedroll or packing element that you had on there just like we do with the Roycroft frame but you also have the ability with this to adapt packs to it and so if you've already spent a lot of money on a pack like let's say a bushcrafter by Duluth you can put that Duluth bushcrafter on this frame very very easily use the existing straps from that pack the existing waist belt from that pack and you've added a few ounces and you've added a ton of versatility with that external frame because now you can use that frame by itself and if you've got that bucket inside the pack already that trash can like I carry now you've added more versatility and you can really make yourself a bulletproof system that way but on the cheap as far as bullet craft bushcraft on a budget or bulletproof bushcraft on a budget goes this frame is probably about 10 to 12 bucks is what it costs to build this frame if you buy these components at contractor packages you can get them cheaper I bought them individually so I got about let's just say 50 he's 50 60 cents probably somewhere in the neighborhood in each one of these joints and then you know maybe $1 $2 worth of PVC so the frame itself was cheap to build the versatility of the frame is what's great and PVC is a lot stronger than people think it is it can take a lot more abuse than people believe it can you just got to get your joints glued up really good and it's gonna last you for a long time okay guys so between this PVC pack frame that we made today

a standard Alice pack frame and the Roycroft frame that I showed you guys how to build you've got three really good frame options you can use for backpacking that don't cost very much money the most expensive would be this Alice pack for even if you got it you'd have the straps as well so then you could use them for something like this if you wanted to the only problem with this pack frame is it's light enough it just isn't big enough it doesn't have a shelf on the bottom of it below the pack you can put a radio shelf on there but that's not going to get you a shelf below your pack early you can do some versatile things with this that I've shown in the past but if you make a little bit bigger frame you can have a lot more versatility in a pack frame so this will work out really good for you I would encourage you to try to make one of these experiment with it try it out trial it and see what you think if you don't like it didn't cost you very much money to make it I'm Dave camera at the Pathfinder school I appreciate you owe me for another video today in our series bulletproof bushcraft on a budget I'll be back to another video as soon as I can I appreciate everything you do for me for my school for my family for my Felicity for my friends thanks guys you