[pct-l] Stitching with Down

[elee at microsoft.com (Eric Lee (GAMES))]

Christine wrote:
>
That idea (wetting down, weighing out desired quantities for each
section,
stuffing the down wet (or at least damp), closing the sleeve, then, when
sewing is complete, tossing the whole thing in a low-heat tumble dryer
to
dry & re-loft the down) came from Marion Davison (Llamalady) - I'm sure
it's
in the archives (if the search engine's working, that is ;-) )
>

Aha!  It was farther back than I thought - a year ago.  I found the post
in my own archives; I hope Marion doesn't mind if I repost it.

Marion wrote:
>
We bought inexpensive down bags, wholesale, about ten years ago, and had
used them for 50 or so nights a year since.  They were getting kind of
wimpy, especially over the middle of us.

A few months back I posted a query about how to go about adding down to
sleeping bags.  Everyone sent me to Howie's "how to make a down quilt"
site.  We considered his procedure but weren't wild about the notion of
having an environment full of down aloft.  We thought about doing
something different, tried it, and it worked.  The trick is to
temporarily alter the properties of the down so that it will not float
in air.  The idea resulted from our experience washing down filled
jackets and bags, which we have done many times.

Here is a step by step description of what we did.

Equipment needed:
a small strainer with a screen mesh bottom (dollar store) a gram scale a
10 gallon tub several small plastic containers (butter tub) big hair
clips/safety pins a large plastic container (ours was about 12 x 8 inch,
4 inches deep) a piece of plastic pipe, 1 1/4 inch diameter, about 3
inches long, smooth edges.
seam ripper
calculator

We bought down from thru-hiker.com.  It came in thin plastic bags.  We
added one bag of down to each sleeping bag.  Herein follows the
direction for one sleeping bag.

We filled the 10 gallon tub with about 4 gallons of water.  He "kneaded"
the down into the water, a small amount at a time, until it was
saturated.  There was virtually no waste (virtually nothing floating
about the room). To prepare the sleeping bag before opening the seam, we
shook the down away from the side seam as much as possible by holding
the bag up, seam up, and shaking vigorously.  I opened up the side seams
of 4 compartments with a seam ripper (the baffle sections go all the way
across the bags) and clipped them shut with big hair clips.  I opened
the seams just big enough to insert the piece of pipe.  It would act as
an entry port to insert the wet down.

We weighed the large plastic container on the gram scale so we would
know what it weighed empty.  We used the strainer to catch the down as
we poured off the water, and put the very wet down in the plastic
container.  We poured off all the excess water, then weighed the down on
the scale.  We subtracted the weight of the container to determine the
weight of the saturated down.  We divided that by four.  We then divided
the down between the four small containers, one for each compartment we
were adding to, using the scale to make each amount equal.

I put the plastic pipe in the end of one compartment and held the bag,
and he stuffed the wet down into the compartment.  You can take a blob
larger than the pipe and it sticks together so well that it slides into
the pipe as a unit.

Again, we had no down floating around the room.  I closed that
compartment with a hair clip and we went on to do the same to the next 
one.   When we were done we hung the bag out to dry.  Today he sewed the

compartments shut.

When washing down filled items, air dry thoroughly, and then tumble
cold.  This was high grade down, we didn't even have to tumble them.  We
just gave it a shake, and it distributed.

Llamalady
>