Sipsey Street Irregulars: Praxis: Granite Tactical Gear Rock Block Solid Compression Sacks

Friday, July 30, 2010

Praxis: Granite Tactical Gear Rock Block Solid Compression Sacks

Granite Gear jumped into the military market a few years back and has slowly been filling its tactical catalog with completely new equipment alongside militarized versions of commercial staples. The Block Rock Solid compression stuff sack brings the MultiCam and coyote versions of the Block Solid to the Berry Amendment clientele.

The squared-off sides of the Block Solid mean less wasted space in your bags, especially when used in pairs. To get the idea, think about packing tennis balls vs. building blocks. Available in five sizes, we used a medium to compress a bulky 20-degree sleeping bag to the size of a Nerf football. In fact, the ¾-inch compression straps and arched lids made such easy work of the downsizing that we managed to shove a warming layer, booties and rain gear in there with the sleeping bag. The wide straps made it easy to pull all the air out of the bag, and the stitching never complained with a pop or bulge of the 210-denier fabric sides.

The sack’s compression straps can be used as lashing points if you need to carry gear on the outside of a pack. We found the sacks shed rain for many hours, but the fabric will wet-out eventually, picking up some water weight, but the interior stays bone dry if you orient the long seam against your pack.

Granite Gear went the extra mile with these stuff sacks, and it shows in the use of impeccable stitching, double-sided multicam straps and branded hardware. Just remember: Quality isn’t cheap. On top of that, the Minnesota-based company sources and sews all its military products in the US. But, we’ve got beat-up, 15-year-old Granite Gear stuff sacks that refuse to die. So, if you hang on to your gear, the Block Rock Solids are worth the price. Available now, size medium $40 coyote, $50 MultiCam.

www.granitetacticalgear.com

3 comments:

pdxr13 said...: Contents of even plain nylon non-camp-dry-treated stuff sacks stay dry if a heavy-duty garbage sack (black, natch') is used to line the stuff sack. Keeping a couple extra 30 gallon sacks tucked into the drawstring end of a stuff sack makes for quick pack cover for use during stops or while marching.

Canvas gear can be waterproofed with Thompson's Water Seal, if leaving it in the sun for a summer is acceptable. I have a kit of South African R1 packs that are all-canvas that are no longer sticky after a couple years, and repel water even submerged.

All manner of repulsive things needing decon/washing can be stashed in a trashbag during the ride home, somewhat diminishing the stench of socks and underwear featuring the results of Giardia turning people inside out.

Tied-tight garbage sacks with fluff inside float and keep floating until punctured and saturated. The best pack flotation I've found is the bladders that come inside 3L and 5L boxes of wine. These make field pillows and inconvenient water carriers, too.

White water rafting folks have perfected the art of floating and waterproof, usually in bright colors.

Cheers.; July 30, 2010 at 9:24 AM
Anonymous said...: The price on those is outrageous. At REI or someplace similar you could get equally "high-end" brand stuffsacks for about half that price, minus the tacticool.

It goes INSIDE YOUR PACK. Does it really need to be multicam?; July 30, 2010 at 1:34 PM
Allen said...: why does some of the good stuff have to be made by global warming nutters?

my Wiggy's bag came with a perfectly good compression sack. best damn money I ever spent (except for my M1A); July 30, 2010 at 2:34 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

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And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

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"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

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Friday, July 30, 2010

Praxis: Granite Tactical Gear Rock Block Solid Compression Sacks

3 comments:

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