Ghillie suits are a favorite for hunters and shooters alike; they let them effortlessly fit into a deep camouflage hide. While there are many professional ghillie suit manufacturers, many hunters choose to make their own due to reduced cost and customized choices.
This is not to suggest that a handmade ghillie suit is inexpensive or easy to make, but it’s going to take anywhere between 20 and 40 hours to apply professional camo to your hunting gear. Consider it the next off-season task.
The best form of wearable 3D camouflage is found in your environment, and it includes natural objects such as trees and leaf litter to cover up your outfit. Follow these steps to create a homemade ghillie outfit.
Contents
Gathering The Materials Needed for a DIY Ghillie Suit
Gather your organic material together when you make your sniper’s ghillie outfit. You need to have a one-piece or two-piece base coat that suits your landscape, a headcover, trapping, silk either in hanks or twisted into animal skins, a dye, and a lot of determination.
Choose a wearable suit to launch your ghillie suit
Although it’s simpler to begin with, a 3D camouflage uniform, using spray painting and/or cloth patches that blend in the surroundings also lets you make a camo suit out of standard clothes or burlap.
- You could purchase an expensive suit that already has a lot of camouflage built-in. It’s just going to look like a simple camera with a cover on it. Cheaper suits could also be purchased. You could then split up your design (no camo, only a plain color) with a few branches and so forth added from your surroundings; they will fit in quite well.
- Basic ghillie suits that comprise a net hoodie with straps attached to it can also be ordered. This is a perfect start as it splits your template and gives you a lot of ways to connect things to it.
- Military pilot suits and the BDU (Battle Dress Uniform) fit very well too. You may even want to reuse a sturdy mechanic’s suit or related work outfit.
- Often pick the base colors that complement the terrain you’re trying to cover. In the wilderness of a brush, a large green forest suit stands out just as poorly as a metropolitan area human.
Apply the net to your outfit
Sew the mesh net knots to the cloth with a clear thread like a fishing line. Duct tape, though white, performs very well and doesn’t crack. For additional support, put a drop of glue. Shoe glue is the best thing to use here.
Another way to enhance the mesh is to attach it to the outfit. Take the mesh net, about the same size as the outfit, then apply the shoe glue to the edges of the net every few centimeters and attach it to the outfit. Enable it to dry.
Cut off the mesh around the suit with a razor blade, be careful not to unintentionally cut through the crucial areas of the outfit. When finished, the mesh netting does not lift the outfit higher than 2 inches (5.1 cm) at a given time.
Decide on the jute
Braided jute twine is a vegetable cloth that makes up the majority of the external camouflage of a sniper-like ghillie outfit. You can buy green jute material cloth from any of the supply shops, or you can only buy a cloth bag and make the jute yourself. This is how you make one:
- Cut a large rectangle (~2″x5″) out from a burlap bag. Create a slit around the top or bottom edge such that the cloth can be loosened. Sit back, support the ends of the torch with your two feet, and start drawing out the torch strings that run horizontally towards you.
- Remove enough horizontal fabric, so the residual longitudinal fabric is approximately the same length as the horizontal fabric that you have already cut. When it is finished, take the pair of scissors and break the fabrics out of the bag. Place them together with the rest of the fabrics you’ve sheared out of the bag.
- Target and have your balls about 7″ to 14″ in total.
Dye the jute if it’s not already dyed
If you plan on using an inexpensive fabric bag as your synthetic jute, you might also want to dye it to match the shade of your environment.
Identify browns, greens, or even grays in the area where you are wearing a ghillie outfit and balance them with unique shades of dye. Follow the dye packet instructions for coating jute strings.
- When the pile of jute threads have been dyed, run them in cold water till the water is clear. Set the strings to dry in the heat.
- Don’t be surprised if the shades turn darker because of the coloring. Although they are already damp, the coloring begins to look darker. When it dries, the spray paint gets brighter. Enable the jute to dry completely before rendering a dark color decision.
- If you feel that the color is too dark and not practical, you should soak the fabric in a liquid solution treated with bleach. Begin with a 1:10 bleach-to-water proportion, to begin with, and move up from there.
Step-By-Step Guide to Making your own Ghillie suit
After gathering all your ghillie material, follow the step-by-step guide below to design an outfit.
Step 1
Tie the jute clumps to the net with quick knots by taking about 10 or so strings of jute, piling them together, and then attaching them to the mesh net using a basic overarm knot. Remember to pick 3 or 4 shades that are common in your ghillie outfit.
You want to consider randomizing colors to prevent being surrounded by one type of solid color in a single spot. Act with single-colored chunks at a time and put them on the suit as predictably as possible. Keep in mind that the longer the strings, the less “natural landscape” you’re going to look like.
Step 2
Plump up your ghillie outfit after you’re done with the jute tie and check for facial hair. Pick up your ghillie outfit, shake it gently in the breeze, and put it back down afterward. Apply the requisite jute clumps to any facial hair.
Step 3
Signs of wear and tear on the straps are optional. If you did a decent job of dying your jute and attaching it to the outfit, you would not have to do so. But it just probably wouldn’t hurt in the middle of the day. Wear the straps by carrying them behind the car, covering them in the dirt, or adding fertilizer. This will help in eliminating the human smell, particularly if the ghillie outfit is used for hunting or target shooting.
Step 4
Making a ghillie hood is literally a different way to achieve a ghillie hood. The best way to do this is to cut a circular piece of mesh net and literally lace it like a veil across your head. (This appears to come off easily.) The second approach is to tack a circular piece of net across a cap, with the same method you used to bind the mesh straps to the outfit.
Once you have settled on the shape of your hood, start using the same technique to attach jute clumps to the outfit you used in the previous measures. Weave a bit of natural content, such as trees and bushes, grass, or sticks in the wire.
Make sure the jute used on the hood is equivalent to the amount of jute on the outfit. Position the hood over the outfit to see how the jute ties in. If it looks a little lighter, add some unbleached cotton; if it looks a little thick, take a few strands off.
Step 5
Combine things from the environment to maintain the best picture. Use it any time you plan to wear a ghillie and spend a decent 15 to 20 minutes adding interpolation plant substances from the field to the straps.
For example, if you are in a forested environment, tie small leaves and stems to the top half of the outfit and foil it to the lower part with things such as plants or twigs.
Add more things to the tail of the outfit than to the front; hiding in a ghillie suit typically requires crawling. Things on your abdomen or rib cage, including your belly-crawl, are prone to get harmed or make lots of noise.
Insert larger items around the neck and head. The human skull is a well-known part of the human body, and the skull is emphasized by the arms and spine. When remaining still, the outline must be removed to avoid simple detection.
Step 6
Be mindful of your settings when they alter. If you can continue in the same kind of landscape as you’d get from point A to point B, do so. Alternatively, you’re going to have to integrate the fabrics of the current environment in which you’re heading as you move along.
Conclusion
Irrespective of whether it’s your first or twelfth ghillie outfit, remember, you will need unique styles for the forest, woodland, or even winter weather; test the outcome under different weather conditions.
The most critical feature of a ghillie outfit is to break up your image, as you might be far more easily identified if you have a human-shaped silhouette.
