Tent Crafting

I have an idea for a tent and I am wondering what kind of material I should buy to make it out of. I found this ripstop nylon on the internet. I am not sure of its water proof properties. Would it be better to try to find a ripstop nylon with silicon in it or is it pretty water proof to start with?

I expect the tent will be ultralight and so east to setup people will be amazed.

Here is a link to the material I am thinking about.

http://www.amazon.com/Wide-Nylon-Stop-Navy-Fabric/dp/B0046VA37O/ref=pd_sim_ac_3

If ya wanna go UL silnylon will be a good option. Cuben is expensive. If ya go with a coated rs nylon it will add weight.

Being a first model you could just make it from whatever material you have then once you know it works as a tent, then find the proper material and make a 2nd. Are you also going to use a bug netting in the tent? And maybe a flooring material that is stronger than the upper tent material?

Probably not a waterproof option there on Amazon. I'm with Rick. Find a good deal on Sil Nylon w/ waterproofing and go that way - AFTER you've refined the design using cheap materials...

Can't wait to see what you come up with...

Get it with silicon or get the eVent fabric

I am going to make the prototype out of a couple of tarps. I want to start sourcing materials for the full version. Thanks for the advice I will check into the fabrics you mentioned.

You can do a search for Seattle Fabrics, they are in Seattle, but they have lots of the kind of materials you will need for the final version.   Once you determine what you need then you can find a closer source.  Or they will ship it to you also. 

Let us know how it goes!

Wolfman

Here are some sources for silnylon and other fabrics and tips on how to sew them.

http://www.specialtyoutdoors.com/tips/sources.asp

These guys have all kinds of fabrics and DIY Al and fiberglass tent poles.

http://questoutfitters.com/

Good luck with the project.

Are you making a single wall design or double wall? If it is a double wall, DO NOT use silnylon for the inner wall or you will get horrible condensation. If it's a single wall design go with silnylon or a pu coated ripstop.

The issue with using silnylon is it stretches easily, so you will get alot of sag in your tent fabric during the night. Food for thought anyway.

I'm getting started on a 2-man Bilgy tent tarp with a floor and no-see-um mesh walls. For the tarp part I am using 1.9 oz coated nylon ripstop. If you decide to go with ripstop make sure to check out Ebay! A lady has tons of it on there and she sells it for $4.50/yd obo, so I bought 8 yards and offered her $3.75/yd for it and she accepted and also kindly discounted the shipping. I've also bought coated nylon taffeta from her, she's good to deal with.

At the other specialty stores you'll be looking at $6.50 (for 2nds with minor blemishes)per yard or closer to $10 for 1st quality, so it will save you some money.

TheRambler said:

Are you making a single wall design or double wall? If it is a double wall, DO NOT use silnylon for the inner wall or you will get horrible condensation. If it's a single wall design go with silnylon or a pu coated ripstop.

The issue with using silnylon is it stretches easily, so you will get alot of sag in your tent fabric during the night. Food for thought anyway.

 Very good points. I noticed the UL thing in the original post and thought that a pu coated material may not be the way to go due to the whole weight factor.

I am thinking of making a four man single wall tent that will be based in large part on the Garuda tent designs.  Here are some of my observations on single wall tents.

First off,  everyone complains about condensation in regards to single wall tents.  I'm the only person I know that does not have any problem, I'm sure there other though.  Venting and fabric are the critical choices here.  All of my single wall tents are either Todd-tex, Gore-tex, Or Byron-tex, with the exception of my MH single wall Satallite tent and that is a diffent animal (though it is vented very well).    I believe that it is essential that you have a tent made of breathable material.  If you don't it seems to me that the usuall factors are weight and or cost.  I think if you do not use breathable material you will find that you will wake up and every day will be a  rainy day on the inside of your tent.

Venting.  Of all the things talked about when discussing a tents, (in general but specific to single wall tents) it absolutely amazes me that venting is not discussed very often.  I don't care what the name is on the outside of the tent, if it does not vent properly it is not a very good tent (IMHO).  Of all the single wall tents I have the ones that work and work the best have elaborate venting.  Most, if not all of my Garuda single wall tents have at least four vents per tent.  I find that the venting that works the best is venting on the lower part of the tent wall on either side, venting on each end, ie. door(s) and windows and venting at the peak.   Remember that when you have a vent it will need screening and a strut to hold the outer flap open.  The outer flap needs to be built such that you can close it at any time using a some type of fastening system, velocro seems to work the best from what I've seen.  Here is an example of a vent on the side of a Garuda tent.

This is the venting on the inside of the end of the tent.  Notice that the outer portion of the tent does not touch the ground there-by allowing air to come in at the bottom of the tent.  The vent in the picture above then allows the air to escape.

This is a picture of the  rear end of the outside of the tent again notice that the end cover flap does not touch the ground.  This cover (flap,cone) can be raised or lowerd as needed.

When I look for a single wall tent to use in  the field I look for things in this order. Venting, materials, and constructuion, customer service if the tent is new.  Weight then falls into place on it's own.  I realize that others have a different set of parameters when looking for a tent.  

I just got back from a trip down to Longbeach WA for the Kite festival.  It was wild.  I had no idea that people are into kites just as some of us are into our gear.  Most all of the kites are made with tent material, or is it that tents are made of kite material.  I camped with Mike Morrow and he can verify that in the morning there was no condensation in my tent on Wed morning.

So, since I was stealth camping in the middle of town about 2 football fields away from the main gate of the Kite festival I thought I'd try an experiment.  As you can see in the picture below I was in tall wet grass.  The tent below is the single wall, one man,  Garuda Kaja.  The dew point was such that everything was wet outside by 9-9:30 from the due.  I thought that I would zip up all the vents and see what would happen.  At some time in the night it rained.  On Fri. morning I woke up and found that all the three of aluminum poles did have a very lite coating of moisture on them.  I tried bang on the tent and poles but there was so little condensation on the poles that it would not move.   I canvassed the entire inside of the tent to find no other moisture in the tent.  The vestuable did have moisture on the inside as I had shut down all venting and it does not have a floor as well as the side walls going all the way to the ground.

I have many pictures in regards to the venting of tents as well as some ideas regarding venting and maybe litening up the vents regarding materals if your interested.

It would be my advice to uses tarps like you said for your for your first prototype tent and see if you can use venting so that you will not have condensation issues.  If you can do that, then using a material like Gore-tex, or Event will just make sure you do not get condensation under extreme conditions.

Hey, I forgot to ask were you planning interior or exterior polls and how many poles?

ApeMan, I want that TENT!  :p  Very Nice! 

Wolfman

Which one, the Garuda Kaja is the one on in the bottom picture.  I just got that of off craigslist.  The top three picts are the Garuda Paimihr (Pai mihr).  One that is on my list of tents to get.  I will some day have all of Garuda's tents.  I have one on the way called the Garuda Atman of off OC CA craigslist.

http://byronshutzjr.org/GM_Pics/GM_Cat4Co97_Atman_Kusala.jpg

Sure ApeMan keep taunting me!   I really like those styles.  I saved the web site that has all the Garuda tent information and the cad drawings.  I am thinking about trying to build Kaja But it seems very complicated for a first tent!  Maybe I will just stick with a tarp shelter. :)

ApeMan, Do you mind if I ask what you payed for the Kaja?  And how you find stuff like that?  Is their some automated search system or do you just spend all you like in front of the computer?  :)  PM me if you want. 

Wolfman

I am making a single wall tent to not only save weight but keep costs down. I am looking at PU coated tent to make it really waterproof on top and a bathtub style bottom. These are bare minimum for me. I also hate bugs and lime disease so it also has to be bug proof.

Hmmmm. Are you putting vents in it(high and low?) If not I would suggest you consider it being it is a single wall. If you vent it like this it will create a chimney effect and may help with the condensation problems single walls are susceptible too. 

Wolfman said:

Sure ApeMan keep taunting me!   I really like those styles.  I saved the web site that has all the Garuda tent information and the cad drawings.  I am thinking about trying to build Kaja But it seems very complicated for a first tent!  Maybe I will just stick with a tarp shelter. :)

ApeMan, Do you mind if I ask what you payed for the Kaja?  And how you find stuff like that?  Is their some automated search system or do you just spend all you like in front of the computer?  :)  PM me if you want. 

Wolfman

 Hey Wolfman, Poke, poke, poke.............that is me taunting you...........but for real now.  I just got this one of off trailspace a few months ago FS : Garuda Emeishan 2p * 4s tent ('94) .  I "think" I've payed no more than $200-$225 apiece for each of my Garuda and Garuda/Dana design tents with the exception of the Trikaya which I bought of of Ebay in 1994 or 95.  I paid $400 for that one.  It was NIB just as many of my tents are.  Once you buy a tent the value drops whether you use it or not.  I find many of my tents of off Craigslist as well as looking on many of the other backpacking fourms.  I'm not a member of any of the other foums but they do provide some interesting info once in a while as well as finding some of the gear I purchase.  I also have some buddies that "search the world for things to make us go" just as I do.  As I'm prone to miss things once in a while they let me know what they find and I keep an eye out for the things they are looking for.  It's a fair trade so that we can work for and with each other but not have to exchange any money.  I do not have an automated search system as such.  It does not take long to search all that I need to, however I do not work and have the freedom to sit infront of the computer as long as I want.  I would expect that my searches will take much longer than yours as I'm still on dial up.

The site that was provided by Pillowthread, http://byronshutzjr.org/gm_cadd.html ,should contain all the fabric requirements as well as all the pattern measurments that you need.  Let me know if you need help with that.  Having the pattern and the measurments will make it much eaiser for you to build a tent that would be much like the Kaja.  If you go to thread  Anyone use single wall tents? you will find some more picts of some of my Garuda tents.  I myself am going to try and build a 4-5 man tent based much on the Trikaya.  It will incorperate much of the Garuda philosophy.  I'm planning on using Event fabric if I can get it.  I got a Couloir winter coat made out of Event for $7 at the Goodwill and it seems to work well.  I don't know where I read it but I remember reading that Event allows 3 times the amount of moisture to go thru it than Gore-tex.  If I can't get Event then I will go with Gore-tex as I have never had any condensation in my gortex tents.  This tent will be set up to be able to use poles inside or outside at the owners discression and will have many poles that can be removed one by one so that the user can save weight or just not have to use if the conditions warrent while stlll maintaining tent integrity.  With that being said the tent will weigh what it weighs when it its done as I think tents sould be made for the porposes intendend and not for it's "lack" of weight. I will not  try and sew this mayself as this is way to complicated in regards to the sewing knowledge I posess.

Drove the family crazy over Christmas when I got some nylon and pulled the sewing machine out to the kitchen table.

It's wider and breaths better than my Appy Trains III. Two trek poles and a couple of stakes is all you need. Most of it could fit into a cargo pocket but I'll just put it into the pack for now for ease.

It easily sleeps (2) 6' adults  plus gear in the nose. Don't ask for measurements cause I don't have them. I jabbed some stakes and poles into the ground and made a bunch of triangle measurements. The corners/tie downs are 1/2" webbing gusseted w/ nylon underneath. Latex seam seal on all stitching.

Sewing thin Nylon is a bugger, the next will be Tyvek.

Not much material and far less talent invested,

AR

some content I previously posted @ Spiritburner.com

Good looking tent dude, good to see that other's creative juices are flowen.  I like it.  I'd be interested in more pictures.  Do you know how much money "they" would charge for that?  I'm impressed if not just for the sheer determination of creating your tent, but it's a really nice looking tent as well.  Good job!!  Have you given it a name yet?

Apeman, I am too another Garuda Tent fan, I have used most of Byron's tents including the Jalan Jalan, Atman, Kusala, Kaja, Paimihr and Trikaya.  I recently still have the Jalan, Atman and Kusala.  I love Garuda's designs. I even got a hold of Byron and he was nice enough to send me his tent patents with all the specs.  

yweski said:

Apeman, I am too another Garuda Tent fan, I have used most of Byron's tents including the Jalan Jalan, Atman, Kusala, Kaja, Paimihr and Trikaya.  I recently still have the Jalan, Atman and Kusala.  I love Garuda's designs. I even got a hold of Byron and he was nice enough to send me his tent patents with all the specs.  

 I was recently in touch with Byron as well.  A really nice guy.  I have many questions for him so I'm trying to put it all together so I don't take up to much of his time.  I am fully convinced that these are some of the finest tents ever made, at least the ones I'm aware of.  I just posted under Gear Selecton in the "Any one use single wall tent?"  Lots of picts.  Let me know if I forgot to mention anything as I have three hours to edit.

Please sign in to reply