Building the ‘Outer Persona’: Backpack

If you want to get some authentic ‘woods time’ in your GFFA pursuits,  you’re eventually going to need something to haul your gear around. I’ve had this trusty 1950 pack (made, as far as I can tell, by Bergan’s of Norway?) for seven years now, and I’ve been tweaking it here and there almost since I bought it.I thought it would be a good idea to share all the various mods and justifications I’ve made over the years to make it roughly fit the GFFA commoner’s ‘aesthetic’.Here’s how it looked when I bought it (surplus ‘new’) for I think $14:
It’s plenty sturdy for my purposes, identical to an earlier 1930s model, and made of 100% cotton canvas, leather, and steel tubing (empty weight: 6+lbs or so), so it satisfied all of my requirements! While I didn’t buy it for GFFA purposes back then, as a piece of early-midcentury field gear it had the potential, style-wise. But it did need some adjusting (what doesn’t?) so I got to work.

Though the stock shoulder straps are wide, they’re also square-edged plain leather and are usually carrying 25-30 pounds, so they need some padding. For a few bucks at my trusty local milsurp store I found a pair of USGI ALICE y-straps (LC-1 Individual Equipment Belt Suspenders) and scav’d the pads and some webbing from them:
I slipped these under the pack’s shoulder straps and they were instantly more comfortable.

Next up it needed a proper kidney pad–the stock hip band is fine with light loads, but again, this was my designated Bugoutbag in college and was usually loaded with 1/4 my weight. Another trip to my milsurp monger yielded a new kidney pad ($10) to stitch on. The only downside to the kidney pad was the 2″ plastic side-release buckle, which got slammed in a car door one winter…though it still worked, I knew it was a definite weakness.
Last summer while dyeing the rest of my AgriCorps field gear, I threw the pack in the pot of RIT dye, which gave a nice dark brown tint to the OD green, bringing it closer to the GFFA look (where OD fieldgear generally isn’t a thing). Adding a cup of vinegar allowed me to dye the nylon shoulder pads brown as well.

After repeatedly combing through all the reference material I could get my hands on, I realized that normal tongue buckles (especially ones made of narrow wire) just didn’t fit in the GFFA…plus they’re a pain to use with gloves, while wet, in winter, etc. Side-Release Buckles however, have had a place in outfits of both Republic and Imperial eras:

I tracked down a source for metal SRBs (to avoid potential failures due to plastic’s cold-brittleness) SRBs—actually spending more on them than I did on the original pack ($18).

The existing .6″ leather straps that covered the pack wouldn’t be compatible with the new buckles, so I opted to remove the approximately 18 rivets that held the straps on, and replaced them all with some vintage 3/4″ cotton OD webbing I had stashed away, dyed to roughly match the pack’s brown dyejob. Owing to the thickness of pack material and obtuseness of their locations, these 12 pieces had to be stitched in place by hand.

When the buckles arrived, I ground off identifying information, gave two coats of black gloss enamel, and let them clank around in a bag for a week–to get some of that sweet used-universe look. The long straps meant for attaching gear to the top flap of the pack I replaced with a pair of British P37 straps, leftover from my enameled canteen’s original carrier.

While we have practically zero info on what GFFA types carry ‘on the trail’, I needed some way to pack my sleeping gear–some combo of Thermarest, foam pad, sleeping bag, or blanket–and so I sewed up a pair of cylindrical bags that I can attach onto the top or bottom of the pack ($10 for a yard of canvas).

As the contents still aren’t 100% GFFA-appropriate yet, those will have to wait for a future updated post!

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