At one of the first SHOT Shows I ever attended I stumbled across some apparel made by Valken, a more budget oriented brand that has mostly targeted the paintball market but also produces some products for, and markets to, airsoft. They had a rail with camo garments featuring 3 combat shirts which caught my eye, these shirts being patterned in ‘V Cam’ (multicam-ish), a variant of Tiger Stripe and US Woodland. All 3 had PYCO blend sleeves and collars but with camo printed polyester torso materials, which was and still is pretty unique.
Once proper printed loop velcro became available in US Woodland I knew I had all the ingredients to make a full patterned combat shirt in the camo, which is something I do like to see. I sent over the Valken shirt and some loop to my mate Roman, who already had a good stock of proper NYCO Ripstop in Woodland, and he put this shirt together for me. It uses the stock Valken torso as the base, then the G3 style sleeves were sewn together at Roman’s shop in Ukraine, with a couple of deviations from the G3 cut. Most notably the change from 2 strips of loop on the sleeve pockets over to a solid field.
Luckily I remembered to buy and send Roman some 1″ loop in Woodland for the cuff adjustment as well as the 4″ loop for the sleeves. Though I didn’t send enough 4″ to take in to account the part that is used to secure the bicep pocket flaps and I neglected to ask Roman to use another colour instead. I think I sourced the loop from Whiskey Two Four, since they’re a great retailer when it comes to quality raw materials in correct patterns (or indeed solid colours like CB and RG).
Overall the scaling and shapes within the Woodland pattern on the Valken torso appear to be correct, at least to my quick visual assessment. The colours are somewhat desaturated when compared to mil spec ripstop NYCO, especially the brown and green. But with a number of washes the NYCO will fade and the torso probably won’t, meaning they will both likely even out over time.
I have deliberately left the original Valken label on the lower torso, despite there being absolutely no point to it now. There’s also the fact it makes the entire garment appear to be a more budget item, rather than a totally custom piece put together using materials, from a wide array of sources, over a long period of time, in order to achieve a very specific end state. I enjoy it in my own way however.
A while after taking these photos I decided to remove the elbow pad pockets as Roman didn’t always align the camo pattern on his items at the time, so this shirt will be posted again in its’ final form here on the site at a later date.
If you happen to be a Tiger Stripe fan, feel free to take a look at another combat shirt built using a similar method that I posted a few years ago.
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