Under the Shoulder Gold & Folder Holder

I’ve been carrying around this Maxpedition Manta for a while now. Ultimately quite content with it, but being the geardo that I am I decided to try out an idea I’ve been mulling over for a while now.

Namely to take the two Maxpedition Medium Tac-Tiles off, and turn them into sort of a shoulder holster set up. I was inspired by the offerings of Civilian Lab, namely their Gear Harness Bags. They look pretty neat, but they also look like something I would actually want to eyeball and fingertip before I plunk down the money for them. Not that I even have any money to plunk down at the moment. :-(

So I don’t actually have any gold in there, but that is just a reference to my wallet, so that covers the gold, and I guess the Leatherman Wave qualifies as a folding knife, so that covers the folder.

Ultimately it was just exploring an idea. I was thinking of it in terms of something a little more low key, maybe something I could wear under a coat. That I found out very quickly wasn’t so feasible. It was like I had transformed into the Hulk and zipping my coat back up again proved difficult. It’s also difficult to get at things comfortably. A bit looser and it might work better. 

All I used was some 1" nylon webbing, some 4 1" tri-glides, and a 1½" tri-glide in the back where they cross. Maybe having some hooks on the front D-rings might help with access. Unhook it to make it easier to pull the pouch forward. Might work, might not.

Another thought I had was to weave a few inches of 1" elastic into the tri-glides, and then end that like I have the webbing through the D-ring, either at the front or the back. That way I would have some give, and it might be enough to allow the pouch to be pulled forward when getting something out. Might work, might not.

If you want to see what’s in each pouch, I did a writeup on them in my Manta report.

The right module. A monocular at the back, the cell phone and a Fenix T1 in the front.

The back side of it. 

Left module. Leatherman Wave at the front, and a Petzl Tikka at the back.

The back side of it.

Don’t know that I’ll keep this set up; I might play around with it some more, try some variations. Worth investigating, but I reckon that in a while I will go back to my usual Manta set up.

To me it’s just fun to try out some different ideas, to explore and experiment. Oh wait, I guess that would be an exploriment! :-)