Late in 2002 I made my own ghillie suit. Here's how I did it - I found a few places on the net that gave me some insight, but I found it quite hard to find any with decent photos and descriptions - maybe I need some search-engine lessons.
Hopefully this might help somebody who's thinking about making their own. At worst it gives you some photos to compare your suit to mine - and I've tried my best to make it as close to 'the real deal' as I can.
You should have the desire to spend 40-odd hours bent over a flight suit though and around 200 UK Pounds on the requisite materials.
The suit (front and back) I made is as authentic as I can make it - I watched a couple of camouflage videos and read a few books on the subject and, without actually seeing (or buying) a real one, I think this is how they are.
First off, you want to get a flight suit. Either a Nomex one or a standard cotton one. Nomex is best apparently - and you can get them really quite cheaply. I bought mine from Transatlantic Trading in the UK for around 25 UK Pounds. They have Grade 1 suits that are just perfect for making suits. Get one that's one or two sizes larger than you would normally wear.
It's kind of obvious, but you want a green one - olive drab to be precise. You're going to spray it and cover it in burlap, so most of it will be obscured, but better to start off with something the colour of foliage, rather than a blue one that might be OK if you want to snipe at people from the sea-ward side of a Caribbean island. :)
At the same time you order your flight suit, you might want to get some fishing line - 10lb or 12lb are about right - one roll of 100m-200m should be plenty. Doesn't matter whether it's coloured or not - translucent or black stuff should be top of your list. I bought mine on the net from <fishingtackle> and they were really friendly and about as cheap as anywhere I could find - a reel/roll of the stuff costs around 12-15 UK Pounds.
You're gonna need some Shoe-Goo - and you can't have enough of this stuff - it's fantastic. Pretty dangerous stuff if you believe the California authorities, but very, very sticky. Don't use it in an enclosed room - I've done it, and you go a bit 'strange' in the head department. I mean, I didn't see visions or anything, but I got a major headache and felt real 'odd' for an evening.
Shoe-Goo can be a bit hard to find, especially in the UK, I bought mine from <shoogoostore> for around 7 UK Pounds plus some postage - I used around 3 tubes of the stuff, but, as I say, you'll find other things to use it for. It's actually meant to be used for sticking soles to shoes - it's big in the tennis world apparently.
You'll need some paint - I couldn't find any decent paint in the UK - so ordered some from Diamondback Tactical in the US. It's a fantastic site - try not to spend too much there though - they have some incredibly cool gear - and they do some awesome-looking training.
I also ordered a 'Bushrag' ghillie suit kit - absolutely the easiest way to get nearly everything you need to make a decent suit. I bought some extra burlap from a place in Japan, who's name escapes me at the moment. Again - it's not the easiest thing to find in my experience. You can make your own from hessian sacks - but it can take a lot (no, a lot) longer.
Right. So, let's assume that you've got the following stuff in a big bag ready to be used.
First off, attach the netting from the 'Bushrag' kit onto the back of your ghillie suit. There are three ways of doing this:
I plumped for the third option, to ensure that the netting was never coming off. Believe me, it's not coming off. The photo is from the shoulder of my suit - just right of centre is a glossy lump of glue, that is covering a double knot of fishing line - and is stuck to the suit too.
Be careful when you're sewing this netting on - you don't want to sew it onto the back and the front - that'll just annoy you when you go to try it on and find that you've sewn through the whole suit. Believe me - you'll do it more than once - but better to find out before putting the glue on, or attaching the burlap.
There are a couple of examples on that photo - and you can see that I've only attached the netting onto the suit at 1-3 inch intervals. You'll need to leave enough space between the attachment points to be able to pull the netting about 1-2 inches from the suit. If you don't do this, you'll find it bloody difficult to attach the burlap afterwards. Also - you don't want the netting to hug your body too much - the idea is to disguise your shape. :)
It's going to take you ages to attach the netting onto your suit. I started mine from the top and worked down - I think it probably took me 10-15 hours over about three weeks - I couldn't bear to spend more time than an hour or so a day as I was trying to have a social life as well as do a full-time job. I've no idea how many attachment points I've got on this suit - maybe as many as 100 - I didn't count them. Sorry!
If you just glue it on, you'll probably have it done in an hour or so - for the sake of completeness and to ensure it's ruggedness I put a double knot onto each attachment point and then after all the netting was attached everywhere I wanted it to be, I shoe-goo'd each knot and then cut the excess line from the knot off. This thing really is a labour of love.
Obviously, when you get to the legs, you'll need to cut the netting up the middle for each leg. Don't worry too much about whether it's exact - by the time you've added burlap you won't be able to see the gap between your legs anyway. Just make the cut as close to the middle as you can.
At this point, I'll guess that the netting is secured to the flight-suit.
Get your 'Bushrag' kit together and separate the different coloured strips of burlap - it just makes it easier to work with to have them ready. The 'Bushrag' kit comes with quite a few different colours - and you're going to use them all to cover the back of your flight-suit. Leaving enough for the hat though!!
Collect the burlap in group of between 6 and 10 strands - you can either take them from the same colour, or you can mix and match them - it's up to you. What you don't want to do is put all the same colours together - try and be as random as you can be. You can always spray the burlap afterwards to make it the colour of your intended surroundings, but the less work you need to do after you've made it, the better.
Attaching the burlap to the netting is done with simple knots - just pull them tight. Start from the bottom and work up - that way you don't keep having to lift the strands of burlap out of the way.
Don't glue them on - you might want to change the overall colouring at some stage - and you don't want them to be too loose otherwise you'll end up leaving half your suit on the floor, snagged on twigs, etc.
Keep attaching the burlap to cover the entire back of the suit. You only need go down to about 4-5 inches down the arms - generally they should be kept free.
What your hoping for is to get a decent coverage on the back. You've got enough burlap in the 'Bushrag' system for a decent coverage but if you place it too closely together you'll run out of burlap and you'll be carrying even more weight than you need to.
You don't need to go up to the collar, as you can see from my first picture. The hat you make will have enough burlap hanging down to cover and overlap your shoulders.
Once you've completed attaching the burlap, the back will look like this.
At this point, I'll assume you've finished the back of the suit.
The front of the suit needs to have some extra protection as you'll be spending a reasonable amount of time on it. You'll need to attach extra padding/protection to the knee/thigh area, the chest and underneath the elbows. You don't want any burlap on the front - which is just as well, because, if you've used the ' Bushrag' system, you won't have enough netting to put on it. :)
This is reasonably easy - get your rubberized nylon or padding and cut it to shape - as seen in the 'front' photo. Use plenty of shoe-goo and stick it in place. It's an idea to remove anything that might dig into you - like extra zips or metal bits on the suit. You won't need them anyway - don't forget, anything you put in your front pockets, you might have to rest on it for a reasonable amount of time.
Ideally you don't want sharp corners - they should be rounded. There's less to get caught on anything.
Don't worry too much about applying the shoe-goo liberally over the edges - it'll look bad close-up, but you want it to be secure - and you're going to spray it later anyway - so be generous and get plenty of shoe-goo on there. Whatever you do, don't leave any holes or gaps around the edges - twigs and all sorts will get in there and end up being uncomfortable.
Leave the shoe-goo for a day or so to cure properly - although I'm pretty sure you can spray it a couple of minutes after application.
The padding on the elbows shouldn't be put actually on the elbows - but underneath them - you're not sitting at a desk with these patches - you're crawling on them. :)
Once the patches have been shoe-goo'd on, you'll need to spray them - otherwise you'll look like somebody wearing a flight-suit with big patches on the front of it. Spray them in a combination of the colours that you've got - green, black and tan are probably all you'll need. Try not to leave any straight lines - like I've got on my left elbow - let the edges blur too.
Once you've sprayed them, let them dry and try it on!
AH! Nearly forgot - if you lay it on the ground and spray it, this will happen. Which is fine if it's your grass - but not OK, if it's owned by somebody else - like your mum, or if your wife has a 'thing' about the garden. I guess I could always have re-sprayed the grass green......
The hat is based on a camouflaged 'boonie' hat. You can get these anywhere - a search on the net will find them.
Assuming that you've got your boonie hat - attach the netting in the same manner as the back of the ghillie suit.
Attach the burlap in the same way as you did on the ghillie suit. Don't forget to have as much hanging down the back and sides as you can, try to limit the amount that falls at the front - just cover the hat as much as you can.
If need be, you can always cut yourself a 'window' to see from behind whilst wearing the hat. No - seriously, it works.
Here are some other pictures of the hat in action - to give you an idea.....these were during 'beta' testing, so don't go telling me that the colours aren't right for the environment - I was testing it! :-)
Hat from the back.
Hat in the middle.
Hat behind very very small bush.
Hat from the side behind a thin tree.
Hat from right side, with rifle by the side of thin tree - ideally you don't want to be seen from this side like this. :-)
Well, you'll be having a gun. For the purposes of the exercise and practicing, I used a cheap airsoft M16 as I'm not allowed to use my issued rifle.
Although, I've made a 'gun-ghillie' for it too - I bought a gun-ghillie kit, which is basically the same burlap as in the 'Bushrag' kit, with a thick piece of covered elastic to attach it to instead of the netting. You attach the burlap to the elastic and then wrap that around the fore-end of the gun.
I sprayed the scope, the stock and the fore-grip only - I left the receiver alone for fear of damaging the internals. The scope was safe enough, but I did have 'Butler Creek' scope covers on both ends - and the paint is so thin that you needn't worry about interfering with the mechanics of the scope - the zoom ring and such.
Well - you should have a ghillie suit and hat that look like the examples throughout this page......told you it would take you a while to do.
This thing will go up like a tinder box if it ever catches fire, so the 'Bushrag' kit comes with some fire-proofing material - it's a good idea to use it - although if you've used a Nomex suit, your body should get some protection if the worst happens - your head won't though.......
If you're really scared about catching fire, and lets face it, who isn't - you could elect to use buttons or Velcro as the fasteners on the front - a zip might catch when you're trying to get it undone in a hurry - but Velcro and buttons will rip right off if you try hard enough. Bear in mind though, that Velcro makes a pretty loud sound when you rip it open - so it might just catch on something while you're crawling around - giving your position away.
If you use it in different environments then you can always apply different colourings to the back to change it to your requirements - or add extra burlap. The suit isn't supposed to ever be 'finished' - as it'll grow with you as you use it.
I've not used mine enough to know, but I've seen indications that you're not supposed to wash the suit - it should smell 'earthy' apparently. I guess that's true - unless you've peed in it......
You should also own a pair of gloves - which you can spray too - I use Nomex flying gloves - the photo doesn't do them justice, but you only need to take the edge off their colour.
The above are pretty much the instructions that various places on the net will describe - just in my own words and pictures. Hope some of it helps - mail me if you want specifics on my suit........
As I said at the start - I've not seen a real one or had to use one in real anger - I got issued with a Realtree Leaf-suit which has been good enough for the training I've done so far. :)
