I'm looking to do something in northern AZ in May.  I'm free after May 8th.  Possibilities include the Coconino Loop, the Casner Dirty Century as a 2-3 day ride, or something in the Blue Ridge area.

I'm an intermediate rider and wouldn't be doing super long days, 30-50 miles maybe.

I live in Flagstaff and I'll be working for myself that month, sewing bikepacking gear.  So I'm extremely flexible about dates.

Anywhere on the AZ trail above the Mogollon Rim should be ok, below will probably be too hot.  The trail ascends the Mogollon Rim in the southern portion of passage 28 - anything above that should be reasonable.

What fabric are your bags made of?  That will effect things a little.

I've only used seam grip on Xpac, and it adheres to it extremely well, so it would probably be a good choice.  Something with a looser weave like cordura might have trouble with any sort of adhesive.

If you try the seam grip and it doesn't work, give contact cement a shot - I've had good luck using it on mixed materials.  I've glued cordura to plastic with it and it's held up not perfectly, but good enough.  If you go that route with cordura I would put a lot of cement on the cordura, because it'll seep into the fabric.  And with contact cement you shouldn't move the pieces after you stick them together, so get it right the first time.

I should mention another thing I've read about, but never tried - putting freeze dried meals in a food processor to grind them into powder, then packing them into ziplocks.  I read about a guy who went caving for a month and wanted all of his food to fit into a gallon sized container . . . that's what he did.  And then hammered them in there to fit even more.  Still lost 20 pounds during that month, but I guess he packed enough to survive?

Nice!  That's damn good for your first framebag.

Prepare for the MYOG addiction...

So first I should say that this isn't my original idea, I first heard about it here, and they have a few more pictures and instructions.  But I wanted to share it with this forum now that I've tried it.

This is a guide to feed grosgrain ribbon into a machine, folded in half, to use to finish edges.  No more uneven finishing, and it goes *way* faster.  I finished four pannier seams and made back all the time I spent making this (about 10 minutes).

The plastic is from a box of spinach ($1 because it was a manager's special), and the tape I already had, so I'm not counting it in the cost.  The original thread on hammock forums mentions a specific brand of double-sided tape, but I used what came with my Frost King window film package - I bought it to use the film as a ground cover, so I had an entire roll of the tape left over.  It worked just fine and came off with very little residue.

I use 3/4" grosgrain, and I started out with a 2" wide piece of plastic, but that was far too big - I kept re-creasing it and cutting it down.  The final dimensions came out 7/8" wide, with the two folded-over sections 1/4" wide.  So I ended up using a 1 3/8" piece of plastic total.

I'm making enough gear now that I'll probably still buy the professional version, made of metal.  But I thought this would be a cool thing to try out, and it works great!

Awesome journey, and some good reading recommendations too.  I'm inspired. 

I use VX21 for my framebags, with Jr Ballistic reinforcements along the downtube and seat tube (Jr Ballistic is 840 denier).  On those panels, in between the Xpac and Ballistic, I slip in a piece of 1/8" foam before I do the last seam.

This is the foam I use:
http://shop.bivysack.com/product.sc?productId=92&categoryId=3

I get my ballistics from Quest:
http://www.questoutfitters.com/coated.html#BALLISTICS

Fat is key.  9 calories/gram versus 4 for carbs or protein.  Denser in both weight and volume.  Case in point, compare Clif bars to Snickers next time you're in a grocery store - Clif bars are 100 calories/oz, snickers I think are 140.  Also, carry a small bottle of oil and you can supplement those freeze-dried meals.

The only problem is how to contain oil.  When I'm backpacking I use a small plastic bottle with a hardware-store o-ring in the top, and that works pretty well but leaks slightly (in a ziplock, so it doesn't matter).  Being jostled around on a bike could change things, a lot.  I haven't done more than an overnight bikepack yet, so I haven't tried it out.

One option is olive oil packets.  You could open up your freeze dried meals (you do that before a trip anyway, right?  to squeeze the air out of them?) and reclose them with the packets inside, so if they break they just get your food oily.  I actually repackage all of mine into thinner ziplocks anyway, because I use a cozy and don't need the mylar package to rehydrate.  Repackaged freeze dried meals save me more space than my cozy takes up.

If you have a mexican store near you (or if you live in the southwest, maybe just your grocery store), carne seca is a great way to add protein.

New item!  "The Silo", a pannier that tries to find the middle ground between bikepacking systems and rack-and-pannier systems.  Made of heavy duty Xpac and designed for singletrack:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/184908144/silo-panniers?ref=shop_home_active_1

I've been working on making a better set of panniers for a while now, and I think my latest set is pretty good!  Just as stable as my first one, but a lot simpler, and out of Xpac this time.  I went and took them for a ride around town to show a friend.  With 10 pounds of weight in each and trying to hit as many curbs as I could, they did a great job.  The rack itself moves more relative to the bike than the panniers move to the rack.

The panniers are an attempt at finding a middle ground between full pannier setups and full bikepacking setups.  They are relatively small (6-8 liters each), lightweight, and a good choice for singletrack when you just can't quite fit gear into a regular bikepacking setup.  They are inspired by some bikepacking gear philosophy, in that I avoided rigid attachment points.  Instead of metal hooks, the bags attach at the top with velcro, and then are held down to the rack by a series of compression straps.  The bag itself is just Xpac (VX 42) sewn into a drybag with velcro on the back and webbing on the front to keep the compression straps from shifting.  The bottom is reinforced with ballistic nylon on the exterior for abrasion resistance.

My last set of panniers had an external pad with holes in it to allow for straps.  I was afraid that with padding inside the bag, they would be able to rotate too much.  This time I decided to just go for it and made a sleeve for a 5x10" piece of closed cell foam, inside the bag.  It seems to be plenty sturdy enough, and is way easier to deal with than what I did before.  The other important change was to go from two pieces of webbing on the front to just one.  Two pieces seemed like a good idea, but made it a PITA to adjust the strap - the buckle was constantly running under the closer one and drove me nuts.

As for the future, there are a couple things that I already know I'll change in my next one.  One is to use 1.5" velcro instead of  1".  I haven't noticed any problems with 1" velcro yet, but it can't hurt to go 50% wider.  The other thing is to make a couple of loops at the bottom sides of the bag to hold the bottom compression strap on.  Otherwise it tends to slide off the bottom of the pannier.  Right now I've got a makeshift solution, but for the next bag I'll make a loop using the webbing that the compression buckle is sewn onto.

Now that I feel confident in the design, I'm offering these for sale.  So if you don't want to make your own, check out my etsy shop.  If you do want to make your own and have any questions, I'll answer those too. 

Just finished my first internet sale, a frame bag designed to work around the customer's water bottles.  Loaded with features, including a high-viz interior, wide-opening main zip and a map pocket.  $70 for a custom frame bag of this size in Xpac, $90 for full-frame.  Check out the facebook page for a couple more photos:

https://www.facebook.com/smogear

I'm sewing a custom framebag today and remembered a couple more tips:

1) Make one of your pieces longer than it should be.  Not a side piece, but one of the bottom or top pieces (which will either be a rectangle or a trapezoid that's nearly a rectangle).  Just an extra inch or so.  It's pretty easy to accidentally take up a little too much seam allowance somewhere, and it's nice to have the extra in case you need it.

2) Also, I sew two downtube pieces together and put foam in the middle when I do my bags.  You can make one shorter than the other so that it's a sleeve to put the foam in, so that it's removable if you want (and so that you don't have to deal with it in there while sewing.  I also put foam against the seat tube.

3) Get a seam ripper.  Worth its weight in gold.  A good seam ripper especially so - I have two, one I have to pick every stitch one at a time, the other I can run along the seam and remove it in seconds sometimes (not with shear fabrics, or I'll just rip the fabric in half).

4) Above all, have fun!

EDIT: I'm on a roll, here's a few more!  Oil your machine.  I do it every time I finish a bobbin.  You don't need fancy sewing machine oil, Triflow works great and is cheap.  I put one single drop on the shuttle hook (it's the hook on the bobbin case) and turn the machine around with a hand wheel.  Every few bobbin changes I put some oil in some holes in my sewing machine that are designed to take drops of oil (see a mysterious, unthreaded hole in your machine's case?  that's probably what it's for).  But the shuttle hook is the most important thing.  Any time you machine changes its sound and gets a little sluggish, it probably needs oil there.

Also, if you're trying to pull the fabric away from the machine, and it is stuck, turn the hand wheel back and forth, don't just pull until you break the threads.

Every problem that I've ever had with my machine (except for one) has been solved with one of these three steps.  No matter how weird it's been acting, it's always been one of these three:

1) Is it threaded correctly?  If yes, is it *still* threaded correctly?  Very occasionally the thread will jump off on its own, especially after you break a needle.
2) Check thread tensions (top first, bobbin only if you're confident that you know what you're doing.  regardless, never change the bobbin thread tension more than 1/8th of a turn.  it's very sensitive).
3) Has it been lubed recently?

Hope that's not too much information.  It's way more than I had the first time I sewed a project and it still turned out just fine, so don't worry too much.  Have fun!

Creative water bottle placement!  What's that orange and blue thing under your seat?

Looks great!  You definitely should get a machine, man.     Then the MYOG bug can truly bite.

One piece of advice for your next bag: sew your straps onto the outside face of your fabric panels first, before you put any of them together.  The straps should all be pointing inward.  Then you sew the bag together inside out, and the straps get "captured" by your seam.  When you flip the bag right side out, the straps come out of the seams looking really nice.

I could certainly ship to OZ - send me a PM and we'll work out the details.

I've had two steripens fail spontaneously, but that was in their first year of production, to take that with a grain of salt.  I've used other friends' filters, but meh.  Too heavy and bulky.

I only use aquamira now.  Lighter and smaller.  My entire desert water kit (two dropper bottles, a vial of alum, a gallon ziplock for potholes and a bandana) weighs about 3 ounces.  I wouldn't carry the alum in most conditions, as its only for muddy water.  So there goes maybe another ounce.  2 ounces and I can fit it just about anywhere.

I use the mini dropper bottles from Gossamer Gear, and refill with aquamira from the 2oz version you can buy on amazon (twice the usual capacity for $15).  Links:

GG Bottles
2 oz Aquamira on Amazon

The bottles are a bit expensive with shipping, but I ordered a few other things while I was at it, so that wasn't a big deal.  Aquamira Part A (chlorine dioxide) goes in the opaque bottle, because it's photo sensitive.  Part B goes in the clear bottle.  I checked the MSDS's to confirm, and Part A was described as photo sensitive, Part B was described as "stable".  It's only a weak acid solution, after all.

For filtering water overnight, something I commonly do in the desert, I use a smaller dose of aquamira.  Microorganism reduction = time times aquamira concentration.  Half the concentration, but double the time, and you get the same effect.  Works for all chemical treatments.  Just make sure the solution doesn't get subjected to much UV during the purification.

I learned to sew over too many years to give you really good references.  Youtube is certainly pretty good, but lots of those videos do assume the basics.  Here are a few basic tips for sewing and frame bags specifically:

When instructions refer to the "wrong side" of the fabric, they mean the side that will be inside the bag.  The "right side" is the outside.

Trace all of your designs on the wrong side, and cut an extra 1/2 inch around (this is your seam allowance).

Buy zippers by the yard, and sew the zipper onto the wrong side of the fabric *before* cutting a hole for the zipper.  Then cut a line along the zipper, fold the sides in, and hem them.  This makes a really professional looking zipper that fits the fabric perfectly.  Then put the zipper slider on - there are several good youtube videos on how to do this, but it's not hard, and if it comes on unevenly you can just pull it back off and try again.  Finally, sew through the ends of the zipper to keep the slider from coming off (by hand, unless you have a really trusty old sewing machine).

After the zipper and before you put the bag together, sew all of the velcro frame attachments onto the right side of your fabric, in the seam allowance.  Then when you sew the bag together (inside out) you will sew across them, and when you flip the bag right side out they'll come out of the seam all professional-like.

When you're done you can put an extra couple of seams into the seam allowance (next to each other, *not* on top of each other - never sew the same line twice if you can help it).  That way if your main stitching fails, the bag has two more lines to fall back on.

Good luck, have fun, and post pictures!

Two options I can think of right now:

1) If you're using Xpac by any chance (more for future reference of folks reading, since you're modifying an existing sack), it's quite stiff by itself.  On a recent pack I made I just hemmed the Xpac (by folding over twice, so that's three layers thick) and sewed webbing onto the end that the buckles attach to.  That was enough stiffening for me.

2) thin strips of flexible cutting boards or other thin plastic (zip ties also work for small applications).  I have some plastic place mats that I got at a thrift store and occasionally use for stiffening things.

So my friend took it on the Black Canyon Trail and said it worked great!  The only thing he would recommend is to extend the gear loops the full length of the bag for versatility in tying it down.  Also, I'm selling my gear now - PM me if you're interested in one of these.  Cordura or Xpac available.

Here's a little more explanation of the math involved, in case anyone wants to make a bag like this (or any bag with a complex shape like this).  Feel free to ask me questions.  It's really not complicated, it's just very hard to explain in words, let alone over the internet.  I'm used to teaching with a whiteboard and not a keyboard.  Maybe I'll make a quick video if there's demand for it.  I'm tempted to delete what I wrote below, because it's so confusing to explain this without a video, but I'll leave it in case anyone finds it useful.

Anyway, if you look at the whiteboard drawing in my first post, the black circled numbers are how thick/wide we wanted the bag to be at those points.  So it's 1.5 inches wide along the seat post, 6 inches in the back, and 4 at the bottom.  The basic idea is to measure all of the distances we need on the whiteboard, with an actual ruler, and then calculate how long the fabric will actually be along those lines (this is where the pythagorean theorem comes in).

I divided the side panel into triangles by drawing dotted lines.  I measured the lengths from one point to another on the whiteboard for all of those sides.  I only wrote a couple of those down; they are in green.  The red numbers are the final numbers that we will be calculating, which is how long the fabric will actually be along those lines.

In the upper left of the whiteboard you can see a drawing of the next step.  This is a cross-section of the bag, along the dotted line that reads 7 and 7/8th inches (looks like 3/8ths in the picture).  You can see it's 1.5 inches wide at the top, and 6 at the bottom.  It's 7.5 inches tall measured on the whiteboard, that's the solid line in the middle.  Now we're going to make a triangle (on the left side, using the dotted line which is also 7.5 inches).  The bottom of the triangle is (6-1.5)/2 = 2.25 inches.  Why?  Because it's half the difference between the top and the bottom.

Now we know two sides of a right triangle, so we can use the pythagorean theorem: a^2 + b^2 = c^2.  a and b are the short sides and c is the long side, which is what we want to know.  So c^2 = 2.25^2 + 7.5^2, which is 61.3.  So c is the square roof of 61.3, which is 7.83.  Multiply .83 by 8 and you get 6.64, round up to 7 and it's 7/8ths.

Once you have all of those distances figured out, you can lay it out on a piece of fabric, drawing one triangle at a time.  I started in the back of the bag and moved forward.  Basically you're just guessing and checking with a ruler at where the point of the triangle should be, then drawing the two lines towards that point.  You can see what it ends up looking like in the picture I have of my fabric pieces.