With a Revelate Harness on the front of the bike, I have the choice of using an existing dry bag or random items packed in a roughly cylindrical fashion. The Sweetroll uses an integrated double ended dry bag joined to the bar mount, which I always like using. It is easy to load, adjust and get at your kit. Revelate offers a separate dry bag, called the Saltyroll which I thought about getting and Porcelain Rocket have the Nugget, which is a similar size as well.
However, I have had a hankering to make somethign from DCF (formerly cuben fiber) for some time and so I decided to bite the bullet and make a double ended dry bag. The downside is that if you screw up, the material cost per sqm is high. The upside is that it is really easy to work with. You need double sided tape, a good plan and a sharp blade, as it is surprisingly difficult to cut.
I used 34g sqm DCF, in black (more like see-through-dark) which is on the light side, compared to a Mountain Laurel Designs DCF dry bag for example, but should have enough abrasion resistance to last for a while.
The designs is a simple cylinder (rectangle with shorter seam joined by 25mm double sided tape) then the ends are folded and bonded around something that will provide some stiffness so the roll top will work. I used some 0.004″ shim stock plastic. Finally, you make strips (I used 5 layers of DCF, folded over) which were then bonded to the edges and simple plastic buckles. For these sections, I used 13mm double sided tape. I reinforced these with a ‘patch’ of DCF on a strip of wider, 25mm double sided tape.
Care should be taken so no join will be pressured in ‘peel’ – they should all be in ‘shear’. With this design, it is no great difficulty to avoid this.
Leave it to cure for 24hrs and then you’re good to go. Capacity is around 10L and it weighs quarter of a sparrows fart.
Questions? fire away!
drj0nswanderings 
There’s only a couple of things I would like to change on my Revelate Saltyroll and one is the weight as even stuffed with lightweight item’s it feels heavy and the other is to make it slightly less long and thin as it can be a tight squeeze getting stuff in. No body seems to make an optimum size dry bag as they tend be either too square in shape causing tyre rub or like the Saltyroll which is the opposite.
I would be interested in buying one of these dry bags if you make anymore?
i’ll see how this one lasts in use and let you know – i have to say though they are not cost effective – the material is so expensive to buy in small amounts the bags end up being pretty spendy…
Interesting…
Just bought a Saltyroll from Andy @ Backcountry and paired it to a Wildcat Harness to get the same thing going. Very happy with this system so far – zero bounce, zero interference with steering and plenty of clearance even on a “racy” full bounce 29er.
The Wildcat harness fits tight on the bars so with a long narrow dry bag like the Saltyroll I’d be surprised if you did have clearance issues. I don’t have any with the Revelate harness when I use it with the Saltyroll but as it uses a spacer set-up to hold it a couple of inches off the bar for somewhere to feed your shifter/brake lines it doesn’t leave much room when using other brand dry bags which tend to be wider length ways so clearance can be an issue. A dry bag somewhere in size between an Alpkit one and the Saltyroll would be my preference.
When you’re talking double sided tape, are we talking run of the mill tape? I’m amazed it’s so simple!
its not basic double sided tape – there are a few brands of single and double sided tape that are strong enough to bond DCF – if you look on extremtextil, it is sold by the meter…
Hey DrjOn!
I’m looking for a pattern for a double ended roll top dry bag, and want to make sure I have the dimensions right.
Based on your (not so readable 😝) scripture on your little notebook, I understand that you added 150mm on each side, for a final width (or length, whatever) of bag of 500mm.
I read that you intend on rolling 3 times the strap (which is 25mm wide, so 75mm), but that you add another 75mm to that. Why oh why, that eludes me!
Thank you if you can enlighten me 😊
You need to make the diameter of the end of the bag once stuffed! :-)~