RE: [pct-l] Tarp materials

["Mayer, Jim" <JMayer@crt.xerox.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joanne Lennox [mailto:goforth@cio.net]
...
> It is hard
> for me to imagine such a material enduring a thruhike in the form of a
> tent.  I have not even been able to find a seller of this 
> type of material
> (Rain Shed, Seattle Fabrics, Adventure sometHing or the 
> other, and Wyeast
> have fabrics with 1 oz coatings, but I couldn't find anything 
> close to this
> unless it was uncoated).
> 
> Does anyone know where you can purchase 1.1 ounces nylon 
> impregnated with
> silicone?	
> 
You can buy the stuff from Stephensons.

	Stephensons
	22 Hook Road
	Gilford, NH 03246

	1.4 oz silicone coated high tenacity ripstop Nylon 62 to 66"
	$10/yard

Rachel DuBois thru-hiked the AT with a Stephensons tent and liked it very
much.  Here description of it is here:

	http://www.backcountry.net/arch/at/9710/msg00366.html

Stephenson's tents have been used successfully on serious mountaineering
trips, so it is clearly possible to build tents out of siliconized nylon
that will withstand serious wind.

> Has anybody used such a material for a tarp.? ( I think that 
> a tarp can
> often be subject to harder stresses in high winds because the 
> attachment
> points are ofter farther from their anchor and higher off the 
> ground than
> they are in a tent.).

I have a Stephensons tent, and the material is amazingly strong.  I think,
though, that the trick is to reinforce the high stress areas.  Identifying
those areas is probably tricky.  At a minimum, I'd reinforce all the tie in
points on a tarp with some sort of backing fabric.  But that's just one
person's opinion, and I'm not even a structural engineer.

-- Jim Mayer
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