My afternoon....or Birth of a Ghillie

[hillbilly]

My afternoon....or Birth of a Ghillie... now with PICS!

I have wanted a ghillie suit for years.

I have also slowly collected the various parts...the BDUs, the burlap, the camo netting, even got the Shoe Goo.

This afternoon, the thing has started to take shape on my living room floor. (Here's where teaching in higher education for not a whole lot of money really pays off.....very light teaching schedules in the summers....yippee!)

Right now, there is a woodland pattern BDU top spread flat between the coffee table and the TV, and it's got netting Shoe Goo'ed to about 90% of the back.

I'm letting the back dry before I flip the shirt over and Shoe Goo the netting to the tops of the shoulders and about six inches down the front side.

After I post this, and my head stops buzzing from the Shoe Goo fumes, I'm going to affix netting to the BDU pants I've got.

I will post pics when I get the project further along.

hillbilly

 

[4v50 Gary]

Yep, a series of pics. I'm too busy to do anything right now. I made a pair of mocassins and then after wearing them for a week, disassembled them to recut the leather. Progress stopped right then. Well, one of these days I'll get back to it.

 

[Satch]

Birth of Ghillie

Remember with a Ghillie they have to fit the background you'll be in. In other words a leaf and brush look won't work in a grassland area. That is something they teach the snipers in our Military. Those guys learn to change the look as they slowly move from one background to another,because a sudden change will give away their position.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Where are the pics (or are you technological inept like me and can't even figure out how to post - really, I don't & I'm too lazy to look at the instructions posted at this website)?

 

[hillbilly]

Pics will come as soon as we buy another battery for our digital camera.

We don't even have any fresh AA batteries around that we could sacrifice to the power sucking monster.

Even brand new AA batteries in my digital camera last for about three pictures only, such is the energy drain.

But once we have a new, purpose-made digital camera battery, pics will be forthcoming.

I've read a ton of ghillie making instructions, as well as talked with several former professional snipers about ghillie construction.

They say try to match the colors as much as possible.

In Arkasas, that's not very practical as we have four distinct seasons with four different sets of colors.

Around Fort Smith alone, the terrain ranges from heavily wooded forests to wide open pastures.

With widely varying color schemes, everything I've heard and read says that lighter colors are the way to go.

Colors that are too dark stand out much better than colors that are a little too light.

So, I'm going mainly with light greens and tans and browns.

My suit is a set of BDUs in woodland camo. My hat is a Marine Corps utitlity cover in desert camo.

So far, the main source of camo was the camo material that was originally on the old radar dish camo net I used. I stripped the camo material (olive drab and light brown) off the net, and then cut that material into long, wavy strips.

What's more, this particular camo material is also IR resistant. I don't know how much of a benefit that would give against IR detection, but I figure it's better than nothing.

I've got a good base for camo on the hat so far. I plan to supplement with olive drab jute twine and burlap.

I've got the BDU shirt almost ready for ghillification. I've got to Shoe Goo a little more net to the tops of the arms first.

Pants will get a little more netting glued on in strategic spots in the near future.

Here's a site with links to other sites on construction.

http://files.bns-code.org/ghillie/


hillbilly

 

[hillbilly]

Here are a couple of photos from other web sites.

First, the suit I am not making....the Chewbacca

http://www.ghilliesuits.com/photogallery/photo_gallery_timdodge.htm




Now the suit I am trying to make....the more practical military style.

http://www.ghilliesuits.com/photogallery/photo_gallery_burgefront.htm

Another site with a suit like the one I'm working on.

http://home.comcast.net/~davidawilson/LongRange/Ghillie_suit.htm

 

[MAURICE]

Hillbilly, I hope that you will forgive me if I trip over you while trapsing through the woods

 

[4v50 Gary]

Stay away from the West Coast. Somebody will scream, "bigfoot!" and they'll try to bag you for the bucks.

 

[WhiteKnight]

I very much enjoyed perusing the website you supplied for about the past 45 minutes.

 

[hillbilly]

White Knight, just to clarify.

Those links I posted are not my web site. They are just to web sites that have ghillie suit pics and information.

Here is a pic of the hat I've done.

First pic is hat on ground, upside down. You can see the lighter colored Marine Corps utility cover with the various stuff on the netting.

 

[hillbilly]

Here's the hat, right-side-up.

It looks very good from about 50 yards to the naked eye.

However, binos quickly reveal that the shapes on the old camo netting material are just too big. They are easy to spot through binos.

So, I will have to strip most of that stuff off and replace with burlap and jute.

 

[hillbilly]

And here's the pic of the BDU top with the net Shoe Goo'd to the back of it.