Olive Drab

If you spend any amount of time browsing or reading this blog, you’ll notice that a lot of the sewn goods I make are in some shade of olive drab. The reason for it is fairly prosaic.

I was never and will never be in the military. But as a kid that liked wandering around in the woods, army surplus was far more affordable than any civilian camping stuff was. Also, I had a lot of friends whose fathers were in the army, and I got some stuff from them. I still have some of it to this day. I appreciated the rugged, built to last quality of a lot of it, but a lot of it didn’t suit my needs. I wasn’t carrying grenades or magazines. So I invariably got my mom to help me change things around so that it worked better for the things I was doing with it. (The seeds of making and modifying gear were planted early.) 

Years later when I got interested in modifying and making stuff to suit my needs, I ran into a huge hurdle. If I could even find any place that sold material or hardware (remember, this is before the convenience of the internet) I was asked how many rolls I wanted.

“Uhm...I was hoping to buy a few yards?”

“Yeah no, we only sell by the roll.”

Since I was merely a designer/tinkerer/prototype maker (still am really) this was of no use to me at all. Places that sold hardware were similarly only interested in dealing with manufacturers.

The only viable option for me was to once again turn to the surplus market and purchase packs and pouches, and disassemble them for the material, webbing and hardware. There was a time when the only colour used by every military in the world was “olive drab”. Didn’t matter if I got old pouches from Canada, US, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, wherever. While the options have increased in the intervening years (I now know of places that will sell small quantities of goods to a hobbyist like me), I’m still using up stuff that I scrounged 10, 15, almost 20 years ago, to this day. While I can now get stuff fairly easily, I find myself still liking olive drab. (I do make some stuff in black, but for any of my outdoor stuff I prefer OD. Part of it is that it photographs better than black.)

Olive drab, even though at one time it was the only military colour, now seems to be largely going by the way side. Most militaries are now switching to camouflage patterns (not just the clothing, but equipment as well). Solid colours do remain in use to some degree, but the US Army has switched to foliage green (grey for all intents and purposes) and the US Marine Corps has switched to Coyote Brown (a medium, camel brown colour), and the US military drives the train. Most mills and manufacturers have largely dropped OD, since the largest procurer is no longer ordering it.

Despite this switch to new camo patterns, and many of them really are terrific choices, OD still remains a great option. Whenever I stop somewhere to take a break, it’s usually somewhere interesting or scenic. I’ll drop my pack and wander around for a bit. A dozen paces away from my pack and I have a really hard time spotting it. I’ve started to make a habit of photographing the spot where my pack sits or lies in an effort to show that despite all the new uber-camos hitting the market, plain, old fashioned, drab olive drab still does a pretty great job of blending in to the background.

Most of these are at most a dozen, dozen and a half paces away. There isn’t anything very scientific about any of these photos, no careful adjustment of camera settings, recording of light levels, etc., etc. Just a quick snapshot.

Kifaru Express lying on a log at Sassafras Point.

Exploring the beach in Nova Scotia, I put my E&E down and wandered around for a while. It took a while before I could find it again, so well did it blend in with the boulders and rocks.

On a cold, autumn overnighter, my Kifaru EMR, leaning against a fallen tree.

At the Crack in Killarney.

Leaning against the wikiup.

Kifaru EMR in Killarney.

Kifaru ZXR along the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

Kifaru Express along Grindstone Creek.

In the Chedoke Gorge.

Hung up in a tree to keep it off the wet ground at Princess Point.