Making panniers from ALICE bags
 

I am a loooong way from home and find myself with 2 ALCE bags and an Arkel attachment system to use on the 2 ALICE bags. Does anyone have any experience with making such bags? What would you use for stiffening the back? Remember I am not in North America and Europe and am doing some travelling.

I did read Paul W.'s comments re making panniers from WW II canvas bags, so have some ideas.

BUT, I'd like some actual experiences. Thanks :-)

The best stiffening is also free: corrugated plastic For sale signs. Use a piece for the back and another for the base. Radius the corners and pad them with duck tape to prevent wear points in the fabric.
Rixen and Kaul make excellent QR mounts for all kinds of bags and are used by carradice. You rivet the mounting rail throught he fabric onto the board. can you do that with Arkel?

You may have seen this post before; this is the best pannier build I've seen with military bags:

http://groups.google.com/group/bicyc...iers?version=4

Below is one overall image of the bags, see the link above for more.

Alice
 

The Arkel kit attaches to the cloth with screws that go through the Aluminum extruded attachment "rails".

My Alice bags have a blind "cuff" that (I believe) fitted over the frame used to support the bage when hauled by the soldier.

Where do I put the Arkel "rail" with regard to this "cuff".

Anyone have pictures to save a few thousand words??

I own an alice backpack (love it for backpacking, & have considered doing a pannier conversion, but haven't done it yet).
I wouldn't mount the arkel system to that cuff, without something stiff behind it inside the bag.

Another idea: ditch the Arkel mounting system (by that, I mean save it for another project), and make a rectangle out of PVC pipe. The dimension of the rectangle should be about the same as the backpack. Attach this contraption to your rack, but make sure the top of the PVC pipe is above the rack, so you can slip the cuff on the top of the Alice bag over your PVC pipe. That means the width of your PVC rectangle (and the diameter of the pipe you use) have to be able to fit snugly inside that cuff.

Somewhere on bikeforums, or on the web, there's pictures and an article or thread about building a pvc rack attachment.

Good luck
Rich