Kifaru X-Ray Shoulder Straps 1 Inch Convert Adapters

Designer: Beta-TNT

For a long time, I was searching for a pair of removable shoulder straps with 1 inch connecting strap, yes, like the classic ALICE Rucksack shoulder straps. Most products in the market of this type are all made for rucksacks like ALICE: they may be over-wide, heavy-padded and too long for a smaller day pack. Some day pack products have removable shoulder straps, like Eagle Industries YOTE Hydration Pack, TAD FAST EDC Pack, but it’s too stupid to buy a backpack just for its straps.

Before all these, I’ve tried the original ALICE rucksack shoulder straps, Eagle Industries made shoulder straps for AN/PRC-117 Radio Pouch, and even combined two padded pack slings to make a shoulder strap pair. But none of these works well. Finally I got Kifaru X-Ray Shoulder Straps.

X-Ray Shoulder Straps are enhanced shoulder straps designed for Kifaru E&E Pack. The E&E Pack is a small square day pack covered with PALS straps. The original shoulder straps of E&E are simple two inches webbing straps. If you want to enhance your E&E with X-Ray, you may cut down the upper halves of the straps to approx. 6 inches, and replace the cut part with X-Ray.

Kifaru E&E Pack’s original shoulder straps

Since the X-Ray shoulder straps are designed for small pack like E&E, it’s perfect for me, except one thing: the connector of the strap is a fixed 2″ tri-glide buckle, but what I need is a 1″ webbing strap. So I have to find a way converting the 2″ tri-glide into a 1″ strap. The webbing for fixing that 2″ tri-glide has some redundancy, so the first solution is to use 2″ to 1″ converting module of DLL Modular Sling System I designed one year ago. But for this time, I’m not tending to use openable loop buckle like Duraflex Gate Keeper. I come up with an idea: by utilizing a loop buckle and some straps, I can make a Lark’s head knot tied to the 2″ tri-glide buckle on the shoulder strap, and converting the 2″ tri-glide buckle into 1″ strap.

Steps:

Step 1: make the strap end through the tri-glide buckle

Step 2: make the strap end through the loop buckle

Step 3: make the strap end through the tri-glide buckle again

Step 4: install buckle, like, a steel G-Hook or a 1″ Quick Attach Tensionlock, anything you can install on a closed webbing loop is OK.

Step 5: install them to you backpack, for this case, it’s a classic ALICE rucksack.

The point is to use the least removable/openable buckle. If only Kifaru uses a wider tri-glide buckle, I can even use fixed Tensionlock buckle to replace the split-barred one.

I stuck to my principles in this case: No destructive modification, make the most use of the original.