Wadeventure gave me an idea to repair the ring attachment on these bags. I wasn't crazy about the leather/rivet look so I figured out a way to repair the attachment, make it stronger, more durable, and maintain the original look.
On my particular bag my old carry strap was made from the same material as the ring attachments. So this repair uses the old strap and a hidden nylon strap sewn in under the ring attachment that will help take most of the weight of the bag.
Materials and tools needed:
-old cotton webbing strap
-a razor/knife/scalpel/stitch cutter
-heavy duty hand stitching tool (Speedy Stitcher, etc.)
-brown colored heavy waxed thread
-1 inch wide nylon webbing
-a lighter to melt the cut nylon edges
-scissors
What I did was carefully remove the damaged ring attachment webbing from the bag with the tip of a scalpel. A razor blade or very sharp knife would do equally as well. Just cut every other stitch and carefully remove it. The old webbing is very fragile and you will need it to form a pattern.
Second step is to open up the webbing and cut a section of your old strap to the same length. At this point you may want to use an iron and spray starch to crease the webbing along the folds. This will make it easier when sewing the attachment to the bag.
Now cut a section of the 1" nylon strap that will fit inside the new ring attachment. Cut it to a slightly longer length than the cotton webbing. Make it long enough so that when it is doubled over it will be able to be securely stitched in place. It will be holding the majority of the weight, instead of the cotton webbing.
Once you have the parts cut out and folded together you can start stitching them onto your bag. On my bag the factory conveniently marked the exact placement of the ring holders on the sides of the bag. You may find the same thing on yours, depending on the orginal maker.
In this pic you can see the old damaged ring holder and the new one next to it. The colors are close enough that it's not noticeable except when they are placed side by side. I have another MKVII bag where the ring holders match the strap perfectly, so there must have been quite a bit of variation on the assembly line.
I ironed the creases into the new piece with a touch of spray starch. The heat also served to help form the nylon strap. Otherwise there is no way that this part would hold it's shape long enough for a photo.
Something I thought I should mention is that new heavy cotton webbing is still available online. I went ahead and ordered a short section of it to try out. It is very cheap and cost less than $5 shipped for about a meter length. I'll post when it comes in and we will see what it looks like.
I'm sure there are more brands of this type of device. This is an inexpensive one that I've had for years. It uses a waxed polyester thread that works really well for heavy duty hand stitching with canvas and leather. Get a brown thread though. The tan or natural coloring looks white when used on the MKVII bag.
I'm sure that any one of you could do a much better job of handstitching, but at least it's functional at this point. I will be redoing these when the brown thread comes in. A heavy duty machine would be ideal, but I don't have one of those.
I will also be looking at a khaki colored nylon webbing. If that looks close enough to the original cotton webbing then I will just use that.
