Kifaru organizer pocket modification for a friend

 

An old gen Kifaru organizer pocket pouch

A friend has been bugging me to help sew an additional pouch for his old gen Kifaru organizer. I am very apprehensive with ‘mods’ involving well known brands. For one, I am not that great at sewing and secondly, products by brand names like Kifaru holds their value better if they are not ‘tampered’ with. After much discussion, we scrapped his idea (which involves taking the pouch apart) and settled with another option. A simpler alternative that I am comfortable with.

Why the modification?

Great organizer but it does seem a tight for more items

The friend wanted more space for more things to carry on a daily basis. The standard Kifaru pouch is just a bit too small. Frankly, I too find it a tad too small for daily carry. Or perhaps it is a case of using it for the wrong purpose. I tried putting my own EDC items in it. They do fit but there’s just no space for items that occasionally one would want to include. Items like perhaps more keys, hand sanitizer or even a spectacle case. The initial idea was to make the pouch bigger. Increase the width...fatten it up a bit. 

The alternative 

Plenty of Molle on the back

The back of the organizer pouch has rows of molle. We decided to put together a small pouch that will mount on the molle. This ‘piggyback’ pouch will not be sewn directly onto the main pouch but instead will use a system Kifaru uses to attach some of their pouches to molle webbing. This will keep this Kifaru product intact and the additional pouch to carry whatever additional bits that the friend wants to. Keep the original pouch intact and an additional pouch that can be removed whenever it is not needed. 

We took the mounting system idea from this small Kifaru pouch 

The sewing

Salvaged fabric and zippers from this old sling bag

The only 1000D Cordura fabric I have comes from an old sling bag. Its Olive Drab. Well, beggars can’t be choosers. Its an old sling bag which I had retired some years back. Salvaged enough fabric and zippers to complete for this project. The only thing we had to buy were the plastic tri-glides. I have never seen the metal ones like the ones on the Kifaru pouch above sold anywhere in Malaysia. Furthermore, the plastic ones will never rust. Suffice for this project, fits the purpose. 

Cutting and putting the pouch together

Mounting pouch to Kifaru molle system

The tri-glides make an excellent mounting system on molle webbings

The end result of this Kifaru organizer pocket modification is a zippered pouch, roughly the same size of the main pouch that gets mounted on the back molle webbing. The tri-glide idea we took from Kifaru works really well. They are easy to put on and easy enough to remove without actually being too loose to out on their own. The pouch is a single slot and probably adds 70% more storage capacity to the entire setup. 

Shame we did not have the right color fabric to match the Kifaru organizer

This mounting pouch mod completed without jeopardizing the original old gen Kifaru organizer pocket/ pouch. I would not have dared to tear the organizer apart. Friend seems pleased with the end result and has been using it. The only 'complain' he has was maybe it is a bit too small. To this...I told him to go get a daypack, instead of trying to cramp more and more stuff into such a small real estate space. Anyway, it is a sewing job done!