Bag decoration questions (Pins, buttons, patches, etc.)

[hadvil]

Howdy all! First time poster here. I got a Synapse 25 for Christmas, having never heard of Tom Bihn, and I've been really liking it. It's a great bag for school and the trip to Seattle I took back in January.

In the past, I've liked personalizing my bags with a few buttons or lapel pins. With this bag though, I'm concerned that putting holes into the fabric might compromise the waterproofing - a feature that I've really appreciated. Has anyone tried putting any pins on their bag and could share their results? Or does anyone have any alternative ideas? I got a few iron-on patches recently, but I'm not sure how they'd interact with the fabric of the bag. My bag is Black/Iberian Dyneema.

Thanks for the help!

[Darcy]

Welcome, hadvil! Glad you're liking your Synapse 25.

The holes that the pins or buttons create will compromise the integrity of the waterproof urethane coating of the fabric and void the Lifetime Guarantee in that context. (If you find water enters through any holes you yourself create in the bag, that wouldn't be covered under the Lifetime Guarantee, which only covers defects in materials and workmanship and not user modification.)

I'm guessing that the iron-on patches wouldn't be a good idea because the heat of the iron could effect the coating -- but we don't know what would happen for sure as we've never tried that and we're kinda curious about it, so if you've got some spare patches around you wouldn't mind experimenting with, we could send you some scraps of Dyneema to experiment on.

[Ilkyway]

I am on the phone and cant link but there are quite some examples around here.

Ilkyway

Edit the phone swallowed my text: I was suggesting colored paracord with creative knots on the Zipperpulls. And welcome!

[feijai]

The zipperpull stop knot I like the best is not the Solomon's Bar shown in the Tom Bihn zipper pull blog entry (for some reason called a "robust knot"). Instead, I suggest trying a Lanyard Knot (sometimes called a Diamond Stop Knot). It's easy to tie, easy to pull, and very pretty -- it's symmetric, like a turban -- though you need to work the slack out of the knot once you've got it tied to get it into proper shape. This video is the best I've found for learning how to do it.

Here's a Laynard Knot in 550 Black Reflective Paracord on my BB.

[Ilkyway]

Now I am at home and can link: this is what inspired me to do "personal" zipperpulls: http://forums.tombihn.com/photos-vid...brain-bag.html done by jujigatame
And here is what I made of it (be aware it is a tad girly ;-)): http://forums.tombihn.com/photos-vid...tml?highlight= but there are lots of examples throughout the forums. Even with multi-colord paracord which I still have to get my hands on.

Ilkyway

[hadvil]

I do like the colored paracord and different knots, that's a neat idea. Ilkyway, I particularly like your setup, though, as you mentioned, it is a girlier color scheme than I would choose I just have the standard black paracord and TB zipper pulls at the moment, but now I'm considering a switch. Now if only I could devise a way to attach a pin or a button to paracord...

And as for the patches, Darcy, I think I do have a couple extra. I'd be happy to experiment on some extra material (for science!), so let me know how you'd like me to send you my address. Should be fun!

[Moose]

I hang things off the zipper pulls. I have a copper dog tag with my name and address on one. I have a headlight attached to the strap webbing. I've got a Timbuk2 Shagg bag on one strap. It catches coins, keys and the odd bits and bobs when I'm on the run. I have successfully used real strong magnets to support an organizer bag attached to the inside top of both my 25 and 19s. Please post photos of your solutions.
Moose

[binje]

I have successfully used real strong magnets to support an organizer bag attached to the inside top of both my 25 and 19s.
Moose

Magnets seem like a really good idea for pins, too. Rare-earth magnets are pretty amazing. Except that you'd want to be very careful about where you put your credit cards if you do that.

[Moose]

I do a bit of stitching and have way too many cool needleminders. I've been known to put them on bags and have a couple that are permanent fixtures on my jackets.

[tpnl]

For adding patches (and perhaps can be modified to work with Label pins and buttons), there were a few previous posts that @Miking and @dorayme that had some ingenious ways to do this:

http://forums.tombihn.com/questions-about-bags/6594-how-attach-patches-bag-without-sewing.html

http://forums.tombihn.com/questions-about-bags/8772-sewing-patches-my-synapse-25-sacrilege-good-idea.html?highlight=patch

Hope this helps give you some more ideas

Cheers!

[Kshni]

The holes that the pins or buttons create will compromise the integrity of the waterproof urethane coating of the fabric and void the Lifetime Guarantee in that context. (If you find water enters through any holes you yourself create in the bag, that wouldn't be covered under the Lifetime Guarantee, which only covers defects in materials and workmanship and not user modification.)

What about pin badges on the straps? Rather than on the bag itself? Would that destroy the warranty on the bag strap?

[scribe]

I've put pins on the flaps of my cafe bags, and even (very carefully) sewn a patch onto my FJN, but for my Synapse I've only ever used "charms" - e.g. a Lego Darth Vader flashlight, or some other decorative key fob. If you don't want something as bulky, charms designed for phones or journals would work nicely as well. Like the paracord, they make the zipper pulls easier to find!

[Mathew]

What about pin badges on the straps? Rather than on the bag itself? Would that destroy the warranty on the bag strap?

i guess so. you are essentially damaging anything you attach a pin badge to

[hadvil]

Hi yall! I meant to follow up on this thread but never got around to it. Better late than never, I suppose...

In the intervening two years since I started this thread, I actually came up with some nifty, non-destructive ways to decorate my bag that I'd like to share. But first, following up about this:

I'm guessing that the iron-on patches wouldn't be a good idea because the heat of the iron could effect the coating -- but we don't know what would happen for sure as we've never tried that and we're kinda curious about it, so if you've got some spare patches around you wouldn't mind experimenting with, we could send you some scraps of Dyneema to experiment on.

True to his word, Darcy did send me some Dyneema scraps. I put them on my bookshelf until I had time to do experiments... and there they sat, staring at me reproachfully. My apologies, Darcy.



Aside from procrastination, one of the big reasons I hadn't tried experimenting was worrying about melting the Dyneema and ruining the iron and/or ironing table. After a bit of online research, I kept seeing that iron-on patches generally need to be heated to a higher temperature than nylon can usually handle without melting itself. So I still haven't done any experiments with ironing on patches to the Dyneema.

However, if people are still interested in seeing what happens, I've recently come up with an idea on how I could do this without hurting my ironing equipment. Basically, I'd just sandwich the Dyneema and iron-on patch in between two sheets of parchment paper, which should be able to tolerate pretty high temperatures. That way, if the Dyneema becomes a gooey mess, I can just throw away the parchment paper. So just let me know if anyone wants me to try it!

Anyway, to my decoration ideas. Here's my bag:



As you can see, I've added a few pins and buttons like I originally wanted, but they're attached to paracord zipper pulls rather than the bag itself.



The mini-buttons are pretty easy: I just slipped the pin of the button through both ends of the paracord. They're pretty sturdy and haven't been yanked off yet.



The pins are a little bit tougher. I first tried using the usual brass pin backing (the round one you pinch to slide on the pin). That worked for a while, but the pointy part of the pin wasn't long enough and the paracord inevitably popped it off. I ended up almost losing my EVE pin twice, which would have been very sad (both for me and for WALL-E). The solution I found was a special pin back that I found at Disneyland, which you can see in the picture. The cylinder fits over the pointy part, and then a small hex key is turned in order to lock it in place (presumably to secure the safety of super rare Disney pins). Since switching to these pin backs, I haven't had any trouble with the pins falling off of the paracord.

Finally, I came up with one other idea:



As Mathew noted, using a button on the strap could damage it and void the warranty. However, if you have a large enough pin, you can secure the button around the strap without puncturing it, like so:




Well, that's all my ideas for now. I hope someone finds this helpful!

EDIT: not sure why most of my pictures don't appear in-line. You should be able to click through and see them, at least.