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Making Your Own Chest Rigs, by Jeff J. in Arizona
Among the different weapons I own I have several Russian WWII Mosin Nagants. I have wanted for some time to find some kind of chest rig and or web gear to use with these rifles so they could possibly be used as battle rifles. I have several of the Russian surplus ammo pouches that came with these rifles but I wanted something that could hold more stripper clips and was more modern. I searched numerous times on the internet and could never find a dedicated Mosin Nagant chest rig. Finally, I found 1 seller on Ebay who was selling a chicom SKS style Mosin Nagant chest rig. The seller wanted over $70 for this 1 rig. That was way out of my price range at that time. This did give me a good idea though for making my own Mosin Nagant chest rig. Although this article explains how I made my Mosin Nagant chest rig the idea is to show how you can make a similar rig for your specific weapon.
After seeing this 1 Chicom style rig on EBay, I remembered that I owned a Chicom SKS chest rig. I took it out and went over it examining it to see how it was built and what I would have to do to make something similar. The common SKS chicom chest rig is made of olive drab colored canvas fabric. There are multiple pouches used to carry 7.62x39mm ammunition on 10 round stripper clips. They also have canvas webbing straps used for shoulder straps and waist straps. These also usually just tie around the waist without any buckle and also tied around the shoulder strap to adjust the strap length. The flaps that secure the pouches are secured with a wooden dowel and loop system. These rigs are bare bones and work very well. They were used in Korea and later in Vietnam.
So I decided I was going to make a chest rig and see how it worked out. Just for some background though, I have to admit I know nothing about sewing. I never learned to sew and never had a reason to sew. I had bought my wife a sewing machine several years earlier as she wanted to learn to sew but she also has no experience sewing. So I decided I would learn. I opened up the user’s manual for my wife’s sewing machine and read it cover to cover. When I was done I turned on the switch and started practicing. I am in no way an expert in sewing and I am sure I have been doing a lot of things wrong. That being said, I want to share my experience making this Mosin Nagant chest rig as best as I can. Please forgive me if I do not use the correct sewing terminology.
I figured that I needed to begin purchasing some supplies before I began. I started with fabric and began looking online for fabrics I wanted to use. I planned on buying military camouflage fabric that was actual surplus stock.
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