Saturday, 24 October 2009

Lighterweight Repair Kit

I’ve spoken on here about my efforts to reduce the weight of what I carry around with me. My repair kit seems to have been growing in size and weight for a while now. It all fit into a Kifaru ChamberPocket and consists of the hussif and repair kit, zip ties, a few more stealth repair buckles, a patching kit for inflatable seats and mattresses, a Goretex repair kit, Tenacious Tape, some other stuff I think – it had become altogether too hefty a bundle.

Decided it was time to scale back. The ability to mend everything short of a rift in the space-time continuum is swell and all, but it’s just too much. For a little two nighter hike not too far from home, that amount of stuff is just silly. It could be argued (and probably successfully) that even this is too much stuff. The inner tinkerer in me is a tough beast to tame though. This assemblage of stuff is about 120 grams, a far cry from the 540 grams of my other set up. I think that one will go into the INCH bag.
Two perspectives of the contents. Spiralling clockwise in the top picture, and spiralling counter-clockwise in the bottom picture. 
(Clicking on them will bring up a large picture.)

  1. repair ladder lock
  2. adjustable stealth buckle
  3. 2 repair stealth buckles
  4. 1" D ring
  5. 2 siamese slik clips
  6. cord lock
  7. 4.5 cm x 5 cm marpat McNett Goretex repair material 
  8. 6.7 cm x 7.5 cm sage green McNett Tenacious Tape 
  9. 50 cm of foliage green 43668 webbing
  10. 8 cm of 1cm shrink tubing
  11. 8 cm of 1.5 cm shrink tubing
  12. 8 cm of 2cm shrink tubing
  13. OD “Canadian” 2 cm button 
  14. 2 OD 4 hole buttons
  15. OD “Canadian” 3 cm button
  16. 7.5 cm kilt pin
  17. 2 5 cm safety pins 
  18. 2 3 cm safety pins
  19. 5 cm cotter pin
  20. 3.2 cm cotter pin
  21. 2 1.8 cm cotter pins
  22. assortment of needles
  23. ?m of slate Coats upholstery thread 
  24. ?m of black Coats upholstery thread
  25. ?m of chona brown Coats upholstery thread
  26. ? m of gun tape
  27. 27 mm ID key ring
  28. 20 mm ID key ring
  29. 9 mm ID key ring
  30. 8 mm ID key ring
  31. 6 mm ID key ring
  32. O ring for Fenix A or AA flashlight
  33. 2 15 cm zip ties
  34. 3 10 cm zip ties
  35. rubber thimble (I always use these for hand sewing)
  36. 10 m of 190 lb. cord 
  37. 10 m of 96 lb. cord 
  38. 10 m of 45 lb. cord 
  39. 17 cm x 22 cm piece of OD polyester/cotton blend

I think about the only thing I’m tempted to add to this is a small amount of thin stainless steel wire. There might be some other things I should have in here, and maybe some things I can forego. Time will tell.

2 comments:

  1. wow, that's a very impressive kit. Mine isn't much more than a few yards of duct tape wrapped around a trekking pole!

    ReplyDelete
  2. If I was smart that’s all I’d do too.

    ReplyDelete