Tourniquet Holder 2

After one attempt to create a tourniquet holder, based on another design, and not being entirely happy with it, I decided to tackle another approach.

This time I used one solid piece of the plastic material I used previously (I didn’t care whether it flexed in the middle or not) and put channels on the bottom that I could route two separate pieces of shock cord through, and join in the center with a cord lock.

This approach makes it easier to get the tourniquet out I find, but my only concern with this approach is whether the cord lock might be too small and fiddly for someone to manipulate wearing gloves and possibly experiencing a loss of fine motor control due to an adrenaline dump.

On the bottom of the Emdom B.O.M.B.

On the front of the Emdom B.O.M.B.

I have a few other ideas for this I want to try out yet.

Tourniquet Holder 1

I had the idea to make some room inside a medium sized/second line first aid kit, like the Emdom B.O.M.B., by making a tourniquet holder to go on the outside of it. Not only that, putting it on the outside also makes it more easily accessible - an important thing for a tourniquet to be. There are some holders on the market - Mayflower RC’s Tourniquet Retainer, 215 Gear’s Tourniquet/GP Holder, and Blue Force Gear’s Tourniquet-NOW!. The latter is what I based this on.

Raw ingredients. Two pieces of plastic from an old back pack frame sheet, three pieces of elastic webbing, and two pieces of 1.5" webbing.

And the end result. The plastic pieces are end by end inside the 1.5" webbing, which allows it to flex in the center, making the extraction of the tourniquet easier.

Holding the C-A-T® Tourniquet.

On the bottom of the Emdom B.O.M.B.

On the front of the Emdom B.O.M.B.

As you can see, BFG’s is skinnier, but also different in that it only has two elastic loops. The center part goes under a PALS channel and the tabs on the end go under two other PALS channels.

The idea I had was to place it on the bottom of the Emdom B.O.M.B., and two PALS channels seemed logical, with a gap in between them. I thought of just one PALS channel in the middle, but I thought it would cause it to wobble around too much this way, since there wasn’t really a way to anchor the ends. BFG’s two elastic loops do a better job of holding the tourniquet in place. The two end elastic loops on mine seem not to hold as well. Maybe I made the elastic a smidgeon too long, maybe it’s just where it’s placed. And yet, getting the tourniquet free just seems way too snaggy and awkward with this set up.

That’s the dichotomy of something like this. You want it to hold the tourniquet securely in place so you don’t lose it, yet you want it to be easily accessible when you’re panicky. 

I decided to give it another try with a slightly different setup.