I just made a backpack made out of 1.43 oz/yd2 blue cuben. It is probably a good size for an overnight to 10 day trip if you strap things on the outside. I think I made the compression system well as it compresses very nicely as you can see in the photo. I have one small-ish pocket on the back and a bungee system to put a jacket in that I want to get at quickly. The hip pockets are HUGE, they fit 2 nalgene bottles (used for size, I don't actually use them practically ever) easily in each pocket. I opted not to use a padded hipbelt with the weighs I expect to use with this type of pack. It weighs in at 5.3 oz in the configuration in the pictures. All the drawstring channels are open so that I can replace the cords later if they get stretched out. Everything was heavily re-enforced with the new zpacks cuben fiber tape (cuben on one side, bonding tape exposed on other side) and it worked great. I based the pack lightly on the Mountain Ultralight blog post "Make Your Own Cuben Fiber Backpack" (http://www.mountainultralight.com/2011/09/make-your-own-cuben-fiber-backpack.html) but changed the pattern a lot as well as the size and other things. This was my first backpack.

PICS:<img src="/backpackinglight/user_uploads/1330112024_58175.jpg" alt="pack" width="550" height="733">

Looks great Conner! Especially for your first backpack. Those side pockets look awesome with all that room

Nice

Looks like all the seams were sewn

No tape or glue

I taped the edges of seams and taped over all the seams that were going to be stressed more than a little to keep the threads from moving the cuben. It is *very* heavily re-enforced in the shoulder straps (2 layers of .51 cuben tape and 3 layers (incl. shoulder straps themselves) of 1.43 cuben. I am confident the pack will be very strong. I am wondering if, because I have another order of the cuben tape coming in, I should tape over the back of all the seams not only to water proof the pack except for the drawstring. It would also strengthen the seams of the pockets greatly.