So, I’ve got quite a lot of blogs now about lots of different materials and bits and pieces. What I thought I’d do was put together a list rather than a blog of all the most useful ghillie materials I’ve seen and used, to make a shopping list for people to more easily navigate. I know every man and his dog now is selling packs of ghillie materials that they’ve “developed” but it’s cheaper and more interesting to make your own, and be able to adapt things to your own environment. And it’s always important to be able to make your own solutions, and have the kit handy in case you buy new kit that needs to be camouflaged.
If I find new things, I’ll add to the list. Anyway, I’ll crack on.
Raffia – God’s gift to all snipers. Do not use straight out the pack, always dye first (see this from Point6).
Green raffia – Because why not save doing it yourself. Be careful, there are some awful greens out there and things like “apple green” are too bright.
Coconut rope – mimics twigs, superb material.
Scapa tape – a great base to add to guns etc and then add your own mix of camo on the top.
Cotton sheets – always use 100% cotton, not polycotton. Polycotton is a pain to dye and doesn’t darken when wet; important for adapting to wet environments like the UK. Cut shapes, soak in water and crumple up, leave to dry for better texture. Easier to start from off white as a base colour. I use two dye colours, and always hand dye in a bucket to avoid flat colours. Get some grey dylon and brown dylon, do two mixes of 75%/25% each colour to create a greyish brown, and a brownish grey. Full guide here.
Awl – a needle, nice and simple, for punching holes in materials to attach…
Brown Zip Ties – glue is permanent and unreliable, and you aren’t going to sit and sew everything on are you? 1000 might seem excessive, but it’s not. Always get the smaller ones too.
Haloscreen – the ultimate ghillie crafting material. See this blog. One starter pack does a full suit easily, especially if you’re making good use of the other materials too. Way better than an expensive leaf suit.
Green spray paint – don’t go overboard with hundreds of spray colours, too many similarly coloured ones will blend together. You want contrast and breakup.
The ultimate soil colour spray paint – choose RAL 7013…
Scrim net – good for rifle wraps, easy to add material onto. Just useful to have some handy.
Acrylic ink, burnt umber – I use this in a spray bottle to ink tape, bdu’s, cordura, and anything else fabric based. On a brush, it’s ideal for adding pattern to plain coloured webbing straps and slings to add breakup.
Hanging basket liner – seriously. Fine, fibre stuff ideal for filling out bits and pieces. Nice colour too.
Hopefully this’ll evolve into some kind of bible for ghillie making. A few amazon links on there because it supports the blog, but also cheap and easy with delivery too, which is why I use it. You can easily just score a months free trial on amazon and use and abuse, then cancel it to get prime delivery on everything too. Different retailers might ship differently to other countries, these are just the places I use from the UK.
Stipsniper.com 