[pct-l] homemade tent

Tue Dec 11 15:22:54 CST 2012

Hi Erika,

A few years ago I made the two-person version of the tarptent you
mentioned.  I'm a pretty inexperienced sewer with the bulk of my experience
coming from 8th grade home-ec many years ago but I seem to be good at
visualizing how a pattern/project will come together.  My machine is an old
Singer dinosaur inherited from my grandma-in-law and is nothing
particularly special. The tarp came out great and is under the 24 oz quoted
- probably because I use hiking poles to set it up.  It's perfectly
functional and fairly well ventilated if you set it up with good clearance
on the sides.  It feels a little claustrophobic in poor weather because of
the low clearance and tapered foot - but you may not have that issue with a
single person vs. two.  I haven't been able to put it through its paces in
rain as much as I would like, but it's weathered some semi-heavy non-windy
rainfall and kept us dry.  I sealed it as Chuck explained with silicone
sealer and mineral spirits.

It was a great project for me from a weight, packability, and cost
perspective as I was first getting into lightweight backpacking.  And it
was really cool to be able to say that I made my own tent!  With that said,
though, I am sort of in the market for a commercially-made alternative with
a little bit more space for our PCT thruhike.  If I wasn't planning to be
hiking for 5 months I probably would stick with it and save my money, but
I'm not sure the tarptent would cut it after a few straight days of rain in
the Cascades.

As others have said, this stuff is the devil to sew (and measure, and
cut...).  You do learn fairly quickly as you fight with it - my second
project, a silnylon Parcho, was much less frustrating to complete even
though it was more complicated.  Before I started the tarp I made 3-4
stuffsacks from the instructions on thruhiker.com (a really good MYOG
resource in general).  This really helped me get the basics down with less
skin in the game.  I used LOTS of pins to keep unsewn edges aligned.  When
sewing I would pinch the seam between my thumb and finger, with one hand on
either side of the presser foot, and keep a little tension on the fabric as
I ran it through.  The stuff was so slippery that my machine's feet had
trouble gripping and feeding it otherwise.  I have heard that a walking
foot for your machine helps but haven't tried it yet.  The hardest part of
the tarp for me was laying out, marking, and cutting the pattern accurately
- I had a lot of trouble getting things to hold still.

Best of luck on the project!  With your experience it sounds like you
should find it pretty easy after you get over the silnylon learning curve.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 2:30 PM, CHUCK CHELIN <steeleye at wildblue.net> wrote:

> Good afternoon, Erika,
>
> I’ve made several SilNylon shelter tarps -- one of which had the added
> complication of a poncho hood in its center – plus lots of little items
> such as stuff sacks, rain chaps, etc.  I will second the comments about
> SilNylon being thin, slick, and difficult to align and sew.
>
> I especially suffer in this regard, not only because I have 10 thumbs, but
> because my hands are chronically dry which exacerbates the slickness
> problem.  Finger stick-um helps but I avoid using it near any seam that
> needs to be sealed – which is almost all of them.  I think the solvent in
> the sealant will dissolve and remove the stick-um but I’m not certain of
> that so I avoid it.  I find that it is also useful to keep an adult
> beverage close at hand to calm the nerves.
>
> One thing that helped me greatly was I eventually lowered my expectations
> of having perfectly straight and flat seams.  Once the item is complete and
> all the seams have been double-dosed with sealer, no-one will even notice
> or care about a few tiny tucks and wandering stitch lines somewhere.
>
> A net-search for seam sealer will bring recommendations to make your own
> sealer with cheap-o GE Silicone Sealer mixed with just enough petroleum
> distillate to thin it to a spreadable consistency.  A little patience is
> necessary, but it will mix and thin – eventually.  That’s what I’ve done,
> and it has worked perfectly for all my tarps and rain gear.  It is
> considerably less expensive than the ready-made sealer, and one can apply
> several coats liberally.  I use petroleum distillate, i.e. “real” paint
> thinner, because there’s a milky-white paint thinner product on the market
> which contains little or no petroleum distillate.  That stuff won’t work to
> make seam sealer.
>
> Enjoy your planning and your trip,
>
> Steel-Eye
>
> -Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965
>
> http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye
>
> http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 10:18 AM, E Fischer <fisch.lover.21 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Hey all,
> >
> > I'm an avid sewer as well as a poor graduate student and thus, am hoping
> to
> > make my own tent.  I've read all the design options from
> > http://www.backpacking.net/makegear.html and am leaning towards the 18oz
> > Henry tarp tent.
> >
> > Before I dive into this project I wanted to see if anyone else has done
> > this and if they have any words of wisdom both for the sewing process as
> > well as for trail use.  Any advice is greatly appreciated!
> >
> > ~Erika
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