First and foremost, props to Swindiana for the great tutorial on how to convert the MK VII divider into an extra pocket (http://medlem.spray.se/larskalvemark/in ... viipocket/)...if you haven't seen it, go read it! In part, I really wanted to do this for Swindy so he wasn't doing all the work here.
I was wondering how to keep the best of both worlds...frankly, I loved how the divider would help, say, hold up bottles in my MK VII, but it was certainly much more functional once I had the divider OUT - suddenly I could put larger objects in my bag. And over six years, I found I stuck nearly everything in that bag!
So now that I got a new bag, I thought I'd give this a shot...but ambivalence being what it is, I wanted a way to get the divider back. The basic idea is a swing door. Just as in Swindy's tutorial, only unstitch one side of the divider, the side below the small pocket.
My first thought was velcro, and you can easily replicate this process that way, but I had a feeling it would tug out of place. Besides, a good old-fashioned heavy-duty brass-finished zipper at least looked a little less anachronistic in a WWII bag.
Here's the pics...sorry for the lack of instructions. If you look at Swindy's tutorial (above) first, this is fairly self-explanatory.
Additional points:
- you're looking for a 'metal separating zipper',
- I turned or folded the ends of the zipper runs so the zipper heads wouldn't fall right out,
- I was able to do this all w/ a metal thimble, no pliers required, and
- I used standard OD green thread, doubled (so you had four strands on each stitch for strength).
One last note...I would have preferred to have the zipper head on the swinging divider, to reduce the amount of spare hardware in the bag jingling around when not in use, but due to the fact that I had right-handed non-reversible zippers, this would have put the zip on the INSIDE of the pocket, making it hard to zip/unzip at the bottom of the small pocket. So, the zip heads are on both walls, against my preference.
Pics below...thoughts? (If step-by-step instructions become necessary, I do have more pics, but I thought I'd keep this short for now.)
I used 18" zips because that's the shortest I could find as separating zippers and cut off the excess...make sure you cut the right end! 7" zippers would have been perfect, but in that size they didn't make them so you could separate the sides, they just unzipped down to a V. (like the zip in your jeans, as opposed to the zip on your jacket)
zip pocket closeup open Here it is closed:
zip pocket closeup closed This is what the zip run for the divider configuration looks like. I stitched it in place right where we unstitched the divider when this started. This zip run is longer than it needs to be, I just ran it down to the bottom (folding it on itself to keep the zip head from running off) because it was easy enough and I was measuring everything by feel. Besides, hopefully this will keep anything in the bag from catching on the BOTTOM end of the zipper.
zip divider anchor line Here's how the finished product looks in 'divider configuration':
zip divider configuration And here's how it looks in 'pocket configuration'. That pocket is big enough to hold my blackberry (wide but thin) or my Garmin eTrex GPS (narrower, but thicker). The extra surface area of the zip strip translates into a little extra pocket room than just stitching it to the sidewall, but not a lot more.
zip pocket config Gear in motion...I'm a geocacher, so this is my standard tool config. Now at least my GPS - frequently reached for - has a place of honor so I can FIND IT instead of fishing around in the bottom of the bag! Essential gear: GPS, lensatic compass (which FITS the original mini pocket we all have!), pen, flashlight, and nitrile gloves. (I put my hands in a lot of scary places, and I've also found they work for spontaneous rock climbing and free diving.
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geo-gear ready to goSwindy, thanks again for the inspiration!
