Do It Yourself Water Bottle Holder

The Need for a DIY Water Bottle Holder

Last weekend I went hiking with my Cilogear pack. it is a great pack, but my hydration bladder had sprung a leak, so I couldn't use it. I needed to use water bottles. I tried attaching one to the outside of the pack, but it didn't work well. I needed to make my own water bottle holder. After speaking to Graham, the owner of Cilogear, he suggested I make my own using a USPS tyvek envelope. I thought about it for awhile, and I made some modifications to his suggestions.

tyvek_bottle_1

Here is a picture of the completed water bottle holder. I made it to fit an one liter Nalgene bottle. Here is how to make it.

Start with an USPS envelope. Cut off the sealing flap, but keep it for later. Roll the top of the envelope down about two inches. Fold it flat. Do it twice more. You now have an envelope that is about the height of an one liter water bottle, but it is much too wide.

tyvek_bottle_2

Next, put the bottle inside the envelope, and center it. Fold one side so that it wraps around the bottle. This flap should be about 2.5 inches long. Fold the other side the same way, making sure the two flaps end up close to each other.

Next, take the top flap of the envelope, and cut away the parts that do not have the seal for the gluing flap. You will end up with a strip roughly 12 inches long and one inch wide. Cut this into three strips. Using these straps, secure the two flaps together. I ended up using 4 strips for this, because I had cut off the top flap of another envelope. This will secure the flaps to the sides of the water bottle holder.

tyvek_bottle_3

Next, fold down the parts of the envelope that are sticking out below the bottom of the bottle. Tape them down using 2 strips from the sealing flap.

Next heat up a knife and cut some slits in the tyvek so you can thread webbing to secure the bottle holder. The Cilogear pack has 3/4 inch webbing, but the Dee clips are a bit wider. I ended cutting slits about 1 inch high. I started about 3/4 of a inch from the top to provide a lot of material to minimize stress on the slits. I spaced them about 2.5 inches apart so that the bottle holder will not flap around when strapped down. It is true that tyvek isn't very cut resistant, however, I cut the slits where the tyvek flaps were, so I was cutting through 4 layers of tyvek. Hopefully it will be robust enough. But since the water bottle holder cost me zero, if it fails, I will come up with a more robust solution.

If you have comments or suggestions, Email me at turbo-www@weasel.com

Created with gnu emacs and template-toolkit, not some sissy HTML editor.

No Java or javascript needed to view my web pages. They both have significant security issues.

Home