Jim:
Sorry about an error in my previous e-mail. After the article went out a friend told me that he couldn’t find the pack plans on thru-hiker.com. I was mistaken about where I had seen them.
Gossamergear who the makes the GVP4 pack also posts plans for the pack on their web site. See the link. http://www.gossamergear.com/cgi-bin/gossamergear/myog.html
Ray Jardine also sells a pack kit for $49.95 on his site. http://www.ray-way.com/php/order-form.php
Ah, I found it! See: http://www.backpacking.net/makegear.html. Check out the Lab 2300. The first two [designs] seem unnecessarily complicated. I would take a close look at the last one.
My pack is 37″ in diameter by 21″ tall. This gives it a volume of about 2300 cu. in. The top pocket is not included. After looking at mine it also looks complicated but I have added a lot of details that the basic design doesn’t need to be functional.
The top pocket the water bottle pockets and the main pack body were all made with a technique I call “boxing the corner”. If you take a pillow case a push the bottom corners to the inside and pin them flat so the bottom of the pillow case now looks square you will see what I mean. Sometimes you see sleeping back stuff sacks made this way. Anyway, it is a simple way to get a three-dimensional shape.
The gray on this pack is silnylon and the green is lightweight coated oxford nylon ( maybe 2.5 oz.) I hemmed the edges back on the silnylon before sewing the seams to make the seams stronger and to distribute the seam loading over more of the fabric.- Springmtnd