Introduction: Continuing the Foam Board Application for a Reinforcing a Camera Bag

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About: Entrepreneur, artist who loves everything tech and creative!

Continuing my venture on foam padding for other applications, I found a neat way of turning a cheap fishing bag into a very functional camera bag.

I picked up the Cabela fishing bag for about $8 with free shipping and then went about putting reinforcements with the foam board pieces cut to size. The end job was a fully functional camera bag out of a flimsy fishing tackle bag and was a happy camper!

Here are the steps...

Step 1: Measure Your Camera Bag Inside Dimensions

I won't go too much into the details of this project, but its relatively straight forward.

First measure the inside dimensions of your bag. You want to take a tape measure and get measurements of the length, width and height.

Next, cut the dimensions that will be the inner padding for the bag. Don't forget also the base. Here is the slightly tricky part, in order for the padding to stay tucked inside the inner lining of the bag you need to make sure the base edge is touching the sides. Effectively this pushes the side padding towards the inner lining. Similarly, the side padding also need to be snug fit with the other two. This brings me to an important point, the dimensions you cut needs to be reasonably accurate since the padding pieces side panels and base need to push apart each of the pieces against the lining. Luckily for me this worked well and I had no need to glue the pieces together.

You can also glue the pieces together, if you are unable to achieve the compressed form that I indicated above. However, make sure that the pieces are large enough that they don't move about inside.

Step 2: My New Camera Bag

The final finished product really does the job. I don't think even normal camera bags are as well reinforced as this baby.

If you use the compressed method of laying the pieces, you may find that you will need to add a drop of super glue to keep the corners intact. I have also made dividers not shown which are also easy to do.

Have fun and save yourself a couple of dollars!