Politenessman.net

More sewetry in motion!

This is where I started from:
I’ve been carrying my Bersa for a while now, sometimes I carry open, sometimes concealed depending on my mood, where I am going and the weather. I have a vest that I often wear when I’m concealing - its a photographers vest, not an expensive one and its been modified here and there, so I figured how hard would it be to add a holster for concealment? Well harder than I thought - I got the holster in but the structure of the vest wasn’t strong enough to support the pistol properly.
So back to the drawing board.

The project spec:
I figured I’d have a crack at making my own vest. I started with the following criterea:
* I wanted something that didn’t scream ‘carrying’ but could hold a small automatic (Bersa)
* Flat pockets - not all lumpy like the photographers vest.
* vertical pockets that can carry real world stuff - look at a lot of vests, the pockets are shallow, and horizontal. This doesn’t lend itself well to carry, for instance, a hand held ham radio.
* Versatile

Well, I learned a lot - the first of which was; it is *really* hard to make something to fit yourself. Its the measuring - you can’t see and you can’t reach and you definitely need help. Also, start with a pattern in mind. I kept changing mine as I went and I think that made things harder. Part of the problem was I had a bunch of ideas as I went, and I tried to incorporate them.

I started photographing the build, but after a while, the changes, modifications, mistakes, seam ripping and restitching, new ideas, problems and just the time to put the thing together, caused me to give up on the pics. However, that said, here is the completed build - finally. Total time for this is hard to figure, but I’ve been working on this maybe 2-3 hours a week, for the past couple of months.

So Here it is:

Let me point out a few features of this design:
Right hand shoulder pad - for shooting.
Two large (but very flat) vertical pockets
a smaller horizontal ‘dump pouch’ below that
a large MOLLE compatible area
a couple of general purpose pockets and a cell phone pocket

Those two vertical pockets can easily take 20 round AR mags. I’ve tried 30 round AK mags and the pockets aren’t deep enough. This is ok though because the vest is very light weight (15oz total) and two AK mags will give you quite a list to port.

This is the dump pouch under the two vertical pouches. It has a D ring for hooking your keys onto and having them in the pouch stops a lot of the rattle if you have a key ring like mine.

The other pockets are general purpose except for the cell phone pocket which fits an iPhone nice and snug, with a headphone jack hole in the flap.
The MOLLE webbing is not true MOLLE webbing - I used a much lighter webbing. The reasoning behind this is that I wanted versatility, but this is not a load bearing vest. I’ll be hooking small pouches on there, perhaps a small FAK, flash light pouch; things like that. I’m unlikely to want to put anything heavy there.

Inside there are also pockets. These are formed in the vest lining, and are big enough for maps, a wallet, ebook reader or thin book like a notepad.

This pocket has some elastic loops above it allowing me to carry a flashlight, epi pen or similar, with really easy access.
As you can see there is no holster. I need to work on how to get the weight of a small pistol distributed, so it doesn’t feel like the vest is dragging on one side. I worked on that for a while and failed, but I am currently working on a shoulder holster that will fit under the vest - I’ll post more about that once I get it complete.

What I ended up with:
* Screams carrying
* No holster
* Flat pockets - check
* vertical pockets - check
* Versatile - check