WilliamC
Thru Hiker
@cathyjc Have you seen Maddog's post in the Stratospire Li thread? Is yours anything similar, though I imagine less severe?
@cathyjc Have you seen Maddog's post in the Stratospire Li thread? Is yours anything similar, though I imagine less severe?
Interesting! Did you come up with a repair?Just seen his photo.
The damage on mine is much smaller - pinpricks (sometimes lines of pinpricks) - compared to that on @maddogs . I might not have noticed those on mine if I hadn't been looking up and seeing pin pricks of light shining down.
But there is a similarity in that the Dyneema fibers are still there whilst the Mylar holding them together has "gone"
Interesting! Did you come up with a repair?
Cuben/DCF can suffer from creep when under tension. I wonder if in both your cases the mylar/PET film reached the limits of its elasticity?
The 0.8oz DCF is supposed to have a "better" PET film than the 0.51 and 0.74oz stuff but I don't know in which way it's better.
I'm putting it down to 'wear and tear'.
Lessons learnt :-
a) 26g/0.8oz is probably more suitable than lighter weights. I'm guessing it would add about 70gs extra to the weight of my shelter - I can live with that.
b) The gradient between weight of main fabric and the reinforcements (tie-outs/zip/cone) needs to be gradual - less of "a jump".
Agree on wear and tear, it's just a trade off of cuben vs other material... the tent is currently at $4.66 per night which seems pretty reasonabke. If we can repair it and get another thru hike from it I think it would be outstanding.
The gradient thing sounds very logical and the corner tensiiners on my groundsheet certainly support that.
Here's the cuben stuffsac. I think it's a lighter weight than the grey groundsheet, same stuff as the fly, but clearly where its grabbed and pulled around the opening, the stitches seem to open up the fabric here too. I guess a hand holding and pulling is equivalent to an attachment to a heavier fabric.
The second line of detachment (left most in this photo) is intriguing...?
Bottom line I suspect is that taping/gluing seams might be better? Stitches seem to generate a weakness.
You just ain't going to find me out camping at 0F (-17.78C) - my sleeping bag won't go that low for starters.
done it once. never again!You just ain't going to find me out camping at 0F (-17.78C) - my sleeping bag won't go that low for starters.
But for those that do then take note !
Are the tapes being talked about here double-sided? The only ones I've seen have been for seam sealing.
So do you overlap the two panels to be bonded, or just butt them up against each other and tape over?The glue for bonding is held on a carrier tape. Like Selotape but you peel the surface layer off and have the glue left to stick your other layer of DCF to it.
So do you overlap the two panels to be bonded, or just butt them up against each other and tape over?
I'd imagined if there was a double-sided tape it would be sandwiched by the overlapping pieces.
(sorry I'm sure I'm being very dense here!)