All Terraing Gear Duffel Bag

All Terraing Gear Duffel Bag - Repair DIY

This Do It Yourself (DIY) article describes how to repair holes in a 50 liter duffel bag from All Terrain Gear.

This duffel bag is light weight, strong, water tight and has very convenient straps for fixation. I have used this bag for trips to Namibia's Kalahari Desert, to the wilderness in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province and on tours in Denmark, so the bag has taken quite some beating. When I came back from the trip to South Africa I discovered 1 small hole and 4 almost-through holes in the bottom of the bag.

My South African friend Bruno had bought the bag for me before we went on our tour to Namibia, and I did not have any repair kit for it. I hence contacted All Terrain Gear via their homepage and already next morning I received a response mail from Rayn Coulter informing me that he had posted a repair kit to my home address in Denmark

10 days later I received the repair kit. Rayn had included 5 large patches cut from the same kind of material the bag was made from, a grey fabric covered on the inside with a see-through layer of plastic.

Procedure

1) Placed the bottom of the bag on the edge of a work bench with a piece of plastic in between.

2) Marked around a patch with a tush pen. As seen on the image below left I decided to turn the smooth side of the patch towards the inner side of the bag.

3) Roughned the areas to be glued with sand paper.

4) Smeared a generous layer of glue on both surfaces.

5) Without any waiting time, placed the patch on the marked area and covered this with a piece of plastic.

6) Placed a flat piece of wood on top and clamped it down with a cramp (below middle).

7) After 2 hours curing time the cramp could be released and the patch proved to be glued on perfectly with an absolutely smooth appearance on both sides of the duffel bag.

I followed the same procedure for the remaining holes and now the bag is ready for the next Africa tour, which will probably go to Botswana and/or Mozambique in February 2016.

Front Page