Recently I was talking about carabiners. Specifically, I said: “Carabiner: A carabiner makes a very practical keyring and has a number of uses. Several of the items listed above can be conveniently carried on your keyring. If your gear has loops or rings it can be temporarily attached to the carabiner when you need your hands free. I sometimes use mine to carry shopping bags.”
I always try to pay attention to good advice, particularly when I am the one giving it! I decided to make sure that all my rucksacks have a carabiner or snap-link positioned where it can serve as an extra pair of hands when needed. Since I am right-handed then the left shoulder strap seems a logical position.
Several of my packs have loops or D-rings in these locations, so adding a snap-link to these was a simple affair. Other packs needed minor modification. For these I took a short length of badge lanyard and sewed it into a loop.
Here are some photos:
Two daysacs I have. For these I opened up the sticking and then resewed with the loop in place.
This is a large pack I have used for much of my travelling. It is an excellent design that has six large external pockets. It converts into a suitcase so the straps are protected while the pack goes through baggage handling. For this pack I made a closed loop and sewed it into position.
Lastly, we have my Northern Ireland patrol pack. Fitting the snap-link to this one did not involve any sewing. I had already sewn a length of paracord to each strap for attaching the camouflage, so the snap-link attached to this. The detachable side pouches attached to this pack have their own harness, so this got a snap-link too.
Just for good measure, I also added a snap-link to my knife belt.
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