Frankengear: DIY Map Case

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today i thought we'd do something a little bit different and come to the desktop here and talk a little bit about something that doesn't really get talked about a whole lot in the outdoor community and that is map cases so let's go over some of the options that are out there for protecting your maps and kind of setting up your navigation kit right so the first kind of map case that people are familiar with are kind of the the sort of more flexible plastic options uh just like this one right here this is very just very simple uh it's made out of some kind of um flexible plastic and the idea here is you you thread your map in there and you're good to go right these have worked for a lot of people over the years for me i absolutely detest these and it's really for two reasons for one if i leave a map in here for any period of time i find that this kind this style of of flexible plastic is really uh bad for picking up the ink from a map so it's not so much an issue if you buy pre-printed maps but i myself tend to make most of the maps that i use i just make them in qgis or arcgis and i print them out on a normal home inkjet print inted maps but i myself tend to make most of the maps that i use i just make them in qgis or arcgis and i print them out on a normal home inkjet printer and that's what i use and i have found that if you leave this out in the sun or in the heat in any kind of way the ink will tend to transfer onto the plastic and you're just gonna have a heck of a time cleaning it out so it's these kinds of things i've i've used these for years many people still use them they're perfectly fine you'll find a lot of commercial solutions on the market have something like this or something a little bit um more uh more substantial to it right that it will fold out a lot larger but i just tend to not like these for that reason and the other reason that i tend to not like these that are more flexible plastic is due to murphy's law of combat navigation and that is that if you get shot at it will absolutely be at the very edge of the map that's exactly what's gonna happen uh if you need to call in a grid somewhere or if you're trying to if you're in kind of a tense situation and you need to find out where you are it will always be right at the very edge of the map and then what you've got to do is you've go tense situation and you need to find out where you are it will always be right at the very edge of the map and then what you've got to do is you've got to open it up pull it out refold it and then kind of somehow jam it back in there and then you have a clear view of where you're at and where the bad guys might be so i found that to be exceedingly frustrating over the years and i've just kind of had enough with with dealing with that so for some people again it's not that big of a deal and um i know the good practices would land have is to always make sure that your position is centered in the map case that you have but let's face it we're not going to do that we're not going to halt every you know kilometer or so and uh refold our map this is not going to happen so you tend to either walk off the edge of the map or something bad tends to happen right when you get to the crease or the edge so and this style of map case makes it harder to deal with that kind of situation so i don't really like using these so much uh the other style is kind of what some of the more admin nerds like like me uh tend to do which is have some kind of notebook case this is just a normal five by seven uh s kind of what some of the more admin nerds like like me uh tend to do which is have some kind of notebook case this is just a normal five by seven uh standard binder holder thing uh that might have a map case kind of built into it but again you know this is not a particularly bad idea this is a great idea for things like checklists and stuff like that but if i'm going to be using this for maps again it's the same problem you've still got to thread it out and it's frustrating and it kind of creases and the sun damages a lot of times so i really tend to not like these more plasticized things like this so of course in recent years there has been a company that has addressed this problem at least for vehicle-based setups and that is a company called battle board and trust me i have spent several hundred dollars buying all different kinds of their sort of product line right so uh this is i think one of the very first generations of battle board right but uh this is kind of exactly what i'm looking for right so this kind of thing is almost exactly what i'm looking for right it's got a nice solid lexan uh plastic hard cover right so you can ride on it it's very useful in many other ways yo xactly what i'm looking for right it's got a nice solid lexan uh plastic hard cover right so you can ride on it it's very useful in many other ways you can look up product reviews on the battle board system and see just how awesome it is and a lot of a lot of different services and agencies and people use these and i've used these for a long time as well but as you can see there's kind of a problem with it and that is its size it's just too dang big now they do make smaller versions of of these uh these uh battle boards that are kind of like five and a half or eight and a half by eleven so a standard sheet of paper size uh i don't i haven't bought those i just went ahead and bought kind of one of the first sizes they came out with uh but you can clearly see that this is a great idea it's just the problem is it's just it's too big for you know walking around in the woods you're not exactly going to carry this as you're on your hike right for a vehicle yeah it might it might work uh for a standard like talk setup if you're gonna set up like a talk in the middle of the woods or something like that or like a little base camp uh this would this would work great and you can hang it up an like a talk in the middle of the woods or something like that or like a little base camp uh this would this would work great and you can hang it up and have a nice little briefing board but for the most part this idea is something that i wanted to go with and kind of create my own solution and that solution is sort of along the same lines but it's just smaller right so these are two that i made myself this one uh you can obviously tell that i made them myself because they're not stitched very well this is the first one i made kind of on a lazy sunday afternoon and it's kind of the same idea as the battle board setup it's just smaller and a little bit lighter and i you know i wanted to put in places for pens and map markers and things like that and places to put your protractors and even if you wanted to put a compass in there and kind of leave that in there that's kind of what i uh kind of what i like right and you know some might say this is still a little bit too big uh but this is seven inches by ten inches and that's kind of like my perfect perfect size for fitting inside like a british style smock or inside a a large gp pouch it just slides right in there if you're wearing lik my perfect perfect size for fitting inside like a british style smock or inside a a large gp pouch it just slides right in there if you're wearing like some kind of chest rig or something like that i think that works really really well so i made this this first one here is kind of like a low effort sample i made this one to kind of fit inside the standard british army smock and it works just fine same with this one as well i kind of copied the same dimensions just because i liked it so much you know i have a few different little custom things as well uh again i've got the same kind of general construction spot for your knife for your compass spot for a little map light and of course a sleeve for your protractors and things like that so again the reason that i like this kind of style so much is that it just takes a couple of a couple of snaps and now you're now you're on a different map and if you've got if you're not using like a commercial map like this one is uh you can print off many many many layers you can probably get 30 to 40 different maps inside this thing just kind of stack them together and you don't ever have to worry about walking off the edge of your map which is some ifferent maps inside this thing just kind of stack them together and you don't ever have to worry about walking off the edge of your map which is something that you know everybody's constantly had problems with over the years right so yeah that's pretty much the solution i've kind of come up with it's not particularly innovative right but uh it does seem to work quite well uh and if you make your own you can do kind of some custom work like putting a vs17 panel on the inside you know just in case it's never a bad idea to have more of those things around right yeah this is not a particularly difficult thing to build you don't really have to have great sewing skills to to make one of these as i'm most certainly a testament to that because my sewing skills are not that great but it's it's perfectly functional it works well it's decently compact it's big enough to work and yet small enough to carry so yeah so if you're interested in learning how to make one of these let's go ahead and jump to the tutorial where i'll show you how i made this exact map case alright everyone so to get started with this build here is the list of everything you will need to complete this map case one of the is exact map case alright everyone so to get started with this build here is the list of everything you will need to complete this map case one of the more interesting components for me at least was a bit of recycled kitchen cutting board so this is just something that i had around i wanted a little piece of plastic sandwiched in between the layers of cordura so that it can add a little bit of strength and add a little bit of rigidity to the whole thing so that it doesn't flop around so much this isn't really necessary you can do it without it but i just had this leftover kitchen board that's kind of seen a lot of use in my camping setup and i've had no use for it anymore so i just use that right you can use whatever kind of plastic you have on hand a cutting board works really well but if you don't have that that's okay for the front plastic portion i'm going with a piece of lexan plastic not the easiest stuff to work with when it comes to cutting it if you don't have a dedicated cutting tool but it really works really well when it comes to mapping and drawing and things like that so that's what i used and for the main body of the map case i'm going with just a standard uh run-of- omes to mapping and drawing and things like that so that's what i used and for the main body of the map case i'm going with just a standard uh run-of-the-mill 500 denier uh cordura so this particular cordura is in ranger green for anyone concerned so the main body of this map case could not be simpler all we're doing is cutting out squares of each of these materials the cordura the vs17 panel and the cutting board and sandwiching all of them all together in whatever dimension we chose again i chose a 7 by 10. depending on what kind of plastic you used like i mentioned i used a piece of cutting board which was a little bit slippery a little bit difficult to sew so what i did was just sewed it on one side sewed the quarter on one side got that done and then came back again and sewed on the vs17 on the other side just to make it a little bit easier for me to kind of hold everything together rather than sewing three pieces of material together at once but whatever you can do works just fine so there we go there's the main body uh done and now we can put the edge around it so depending on what materials you have again i wanted to kind of stick with using as little materials as possible now we can put the edge around it so depending on what materials you have again i wanted to kind of stick with using as little materials as possible for me i just used a piece of cordura so i took that cordura fabric piece that i had and cut a very long two inch piece of fabric out of that to go around the edge what i'm doing here is sewing it into a tube and on the inside of the tube i'm going to thread a piece of paracord this will help me turn it inside out later normally you can use a piece of wooden dowel or another like rod uh to kind of turn this inside out when we get it all sewed up but i didn't have one that was uh thin or long enough so i just used a piece of paracord and that worked out just just fine so once you have your long tube of cordura which is going to be basically our stand and for grosgrain uh what we're going to do is just tack that uh piece of paracord to the end to to one end and then pull on the paracord which will turn that piece of webbing basically inside out very handy little trick might be a little difficult to start but once you get it going you can get it kind of like to the halfway point it finishes up quite nicely so again you can use a wooden d ficult to start but once you get it going you can get it kind of like to the halfway point it finishes up quite nicely so again you can use a wooden dowel rod or something else for this but i just had the paracord on hand so that's the way i did it now when it comes to attaching this to the actual body of the map case there's a couple of different ways to do it you can just line that seam up with the the edge of the map case and sew it down that way that's perfectly fine perfectly valid you could do that if you want i find that it tends to get a little a little bit loose and i wanted this thing to be a little bit more rigid around the edges so what i did was i basically just flattened it out i put the seam over to one side flattened it out and ironed it as flat as i could get it that way i can then take that and treat it kind of like a piece of one-inch webbing and fold it over the edge this creates a thicker side on one side in this in this case act the thicker side of the webbing was on the side of the vs17 so that i had a little bit of a recess so creating a thicker border which allowed me to fit more maps on the inside so once you've got it ironed flat and you start stitching i t of a recess so creating a thicker border which allowed me to fit more maps on the inside so once you've got it ironed flat and you start stitching it onto the edge it's really not a hard thing to do you just kind of follow it along all the way around the edge of the map case when you get to the corners there's a few things you can do i myself in this case was just really lazy and just decided to kind of fold it and crunch it kind of into the direction that i wanted it to go this is definitely not the best tactic for 90 degree corners but it worked so i kind of went with it and i didn't really feel like cutting that very small piece of webbing to make it a little bit more uh flow a little bit better once the border was stitched on i cut off the excess and went around it one more time just to make sure that everything was nice and double stitched and as strong as it possibly could be i wanted to make sure this border wasn't going to come off and the whole thing to kind of fall apart right so just went around it one more time stitching it again never hurts and it adds a little bit of rigidity as well and there you go the center part of the map case is done so now we can move on to c it again never hurts and it adds a little bit of rigidity as well and there you go the center part of the map case is done so now we can move on to cutting the lex and to fit and making sure that everything is nice and the right size for snapping together like i mentioned lexan is not the easiest thing to work with but i used a dremel tool and a small cut off wheel to cut it to the right size i cut it exactly to the size of seven by ten exactly the same as the fabric but since i was going to grind off a little bit extra just to kind of sand it down and smooth it down it ended up being slightly smaller than 7 by 10 which is just fine once the lexan is cut and all sized just right and sanded down to make sure it's not very sharp you can move on to your webbing pieces and for me i just kind of eyeball it to get it started and to kind of figure out what kind of size i wanted and then i ended up going with three inch pieces of webbing that i folded over on one end to basically create a one inch square of webbing if that makes any sense uh for the press stud to kind of go into cutting all of these pieces of webbing you're going to need six in total i went with again three inch pieces wh for the press stud to kind of go into cutting all of these pieces of webbing you're going to need six in total i went with again three inch pieces which i would fold over then to become a grand total of two inches you can use whatever webbing you get your hands on it doesn't really matter too much i don't even know the the specs of the webbing this is just some webbing that i had left over from a different project that kind of matched uh the ranger green kind of theme i was going for here so so once we get our webbing pieces ready to go we can now uh iron them flat to create that nice little seam that folded over part that's where our press stud is going to go and uh yeah just make sure you don't end up melting the webbing but it's a pretty easy zip across the sewing machine to create uh six of these little uh press stud holder things i'm not really sure what to call them once you have your webbing pieces ready to go you can decide where you want them to be placed on the main body for me i chose two inches from either end on the long ten inch sides and one uh one in the middle on the seven inch sides for a grand total of six uh webbing holders for the snap fasteners i also tended ten inch sides and one uh one in the middle on the seven inch sides for a grand total of six uh webbing holders for the snap fasteners i also tended to line up the seam of the thread along the border as well just to make sure that all of the snap fasteners would end up more or less in the same place all the way around and of course marking everything to make sure that we keep everything nice and right in the same spot you don't want to get to the end and find out that none of these press studs are going to actually line up with the lexan plastic right so you want to make sure that everything is as straight as possible and in the right spot once you stitch them on there you can stitch all of them on and then we can start moving to putting the press studs in using a marker i just went ahead and put a dot right in the center of that one inch square of webbing so that we can have a good target for pushing this heated nail through i just used a normal 10 penny nail and a blow torch to allow me to punch through that webbing both layers of that webbing very cleanly and efficiently so that i wouldn't leave any kind of ragged edges behind then it's as simple as putting your snap fasteners that webbing very cleanly and efficiently so that i wouldn't leave any kind of ragged edges behind then it's as simple as putting your snap fasteners in making sure that they all are facing the correct direction when they're going to be snapped into that sheet of lexan so pretty simple just using a standard pretty cheap rivet package uh for snap fasteners and you know using the kit to kind of hammer them in place is pretty simple so there you go now we've got the main body done with the press stud snap fasteners in now we can start marking where they're going to go on the lexan plastic now there's a few different ways of doing this i again chose kind of the more lazy way and just simply put the lexan plastic down where i wanted them to go and it's hard to see on the camera here but i'm looking straight down at that snap fastener and kind of putting cross hairs right there right in the middle of the snap fastener not necessarily the webbing but i'm creating a really good target for me to drill through to make absolutely certain that the snap fastener is in the right spot uh when we go to attach it to the lexan because once that snap fastener is attached to that lexan plastic it's no e snap fastener is in the right spot uh when we go to attach it to the lexan because once that snap fastener is attached to that lexan plastic it's not moving any and you can't move it over a millimeter if you've messed up so just trying to be very careful and making sure that this all goes together correctly is important again doing this for all six sides we can now snap in the other side of the snap fastener to the lexan plastic making sure that everything fits together quite nicely and once you've finished putting all of your snap fasteners together in the right spot there you go a functional map case if you wish you can stop here and this will work just fine as you can see slide your map in close it close it pretty tightly and everything is nice and organized and you have a pretty good viewing area for me i tend to want to add in a little bit of extra things as we know land nav is not just about maps you need other things as well measuring devices protractors sometimes little bits of paracord to help you measure things and i i tend to want to have my compass again with my map as well of course when i'm out doing land nav my compass is physically tied to my person and not loosel d to want to have my compass again with my map as well of course when i'm out doing land nav my compass is physically tied to my person and not loosely in a map case like this but when i'm just kind of you know storing my gear and things like that i want to make sure that everything is kind of all together everything that i need to navigate in one spot so what i wanted to do was add some pouches to the back so the first pocket that i wanted to put on the back was a simple pen slot for a few uh writing implements sharpie markers dry erase markers if need be mechanical pencils things like that so i took a piece of scrap cordura and just hemmed it along two sides making sure that it's very very straight i didn't even measure the end because i'm going to cut off the end here in just a second but this is going to be our pin pocket so for me i kind of wanted to copy the same design that i had earlier so what i did was i just sewed it to the very very edge i wanted to make sure to take advantage of all of the space that i possibly could on the back of this map case so there we go stitching it in and now we have the basis for our pin pockets so of course leaving a little bit of slack uh to he back of this map case so there we go stitching it in and now we have the basis for our pin pockets so of course leaving a little bit of slack uh to make sure there's room for the pin i went ahead and stitched in the first pin sleeve and then i repeated this a few times i think i ended up adding five pin pockets uh just because i had the extra space and that's kind of what i wanted to work with uh some of them i made a little bit larger to fit things like kim lights and uh some of the electronic krill lights if if need be uh one or two of them i left pretty thin to fit things like pencils and smaller smaller markers but yeah that's pretty much it once i had all the pin pockets in i went ahead and zipped it across the bottom to close everything off it doesn't look very nice but hey it works and it's functional for the main pocket on the back i just wanted to make sure that it was in fact large enough to hold a standard size protractor and maybe a couple of quick reference cards here and there so i ended up cutting a square of fabric just to kind of fit that measurements don't really matter so much really you're gonna have to work with whatever space you have i tended to maximize t just to kind of fit that measurements don't really matter so much really you're gonna have to work with whatever space you have i tended to maximize the space as much as i could uh and i think i ended up making this pocket five by five but again measurements didn't really matter so much for me at this stage because i was trying to make everything fit as well as i could so again i hemmed all of the edges except for one edge which i left unhemmed because i was again going to do the same trick that i did with the pin pocket and just sew it and sew it upside down and then fold it over so that's exactly what i did now it's at this stage that i should mention that i decided that i wanted to change the design as i was making it and kind of copy the original design that i had made because i decided that i really did want that compass pocket i originally just wanted the projector pocket just to keep things low profile but i ended up putting in the compass pocket again so again put a smaller square of fabric right on top of that this would have been easier to do before i had stitched it to the main map case but it worked out just fine i was able to kind of sew this the second pocket directly been easier to do before i had stitched it to the main map case but it worked out just fine i was able to kind of sew this the second pocket directly on top of it before i had gone too far and changed my design this is the thing with homemade products you tend to change your design as your as you're building it so once i had my two pockets ready to roll i went ahead and stitched them down nice and tightly to the main map case body and uh i went around the edge a couple of times again just for that extra extra rigidity and the extra support because i knew these pockets were going to get used quite a lot so there you go there are the pockets on the outside there's the compass pocket and a place for a little light maybe and your spot for your protractor and now for the pocket flap i ended up just taking yet another scrap of cordura from cutting earlier and just kind of made a nice little flap for for that pocket to be snapped closed sewing the pocket flap to the main map case body we can see how this is all coming together quite nicely really all that's left is to add in the snap fasteners for the main pockets now depending on how your pockets look you might want to do things a littl really all that's left is to add in the snap fasteners for the main pockets now depending on how your pockets look you might want to do things a little bit differently but again i just used again another nail i heated up with a blow torch in order tonight to punch some very nice clean and uh unraveling holes uh for the uh snap fasteners right so on the flap side of things i went ahead and just kind of eyeballed it very nicely but when it comes to the other side for this particular pocket i wanted everything to be nice and snug and i didn't want to have to pull out snap fasteners later so what i did was i filled all of the pockets up with what was going to you know be contained in them normally so that i can then mark it and put the snap fasteners in the right spot there's nothing more annoying to realize that you've put a snap fastener just two millimeters uh too short or too long and it just it looks bad and it doesn't really uh it's not as effective as it could be so once i had had them in the right spot i pushed in the snap fasteners uh to to both sides and we're pretty much done and we are done all we have to do is assemble everything and we're good to go as you can see this is rs uh to to both sides and we're pretty much done and we are done all we have to do is assemble everything and we're good to go as you can see this is not necessarily a beginner project but even if you have very poor sewing skills like me you can still do something like this it's nothing is particularly difficult it just takes a bit of time if you're not really used to sewing too much so again this is a really handy thing to make if you tend to like having a solid map board to ride on and you don't want to worry about smudging too much and if you like using sharpies which are more permanent on lexan but it comes right off with alcohol that kind of thing or any kind of wax grease pencil matte marker that works out really well with this kind of setup so and if you like making your own custom apps like like i do this works out all the better so if you want to learn how to make your own custom maps we've made a tutorial on how to do that and we might be revisiting that again in the future so there we go another quick project under our belts and we can move on to the next one thanks again for watching everyone thank you for all of your support especially those of you who support us on p ts and we can move on to the next one thanks again for watching everyone thank you for all of your support especially those of you who support us on patreon and utreon and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade