M50 Down Max Pullover

[Jamie Shortt]

I turned a blunder into an interesting jacket. I had originally made a primaloft pullover jacket based on an adjusted thru-hiker.com Kinsman jacket from gray M50. I washed this jacket in a washing machine. Even though I have done this with other primaloft MYOG items this jacket got wound around the agitator and the spin cycle left the inner primaloft shredded into clumps. I was close to throwing the jacket out when I got the idea to open the jacket up and see if I could redistribute the primaloft and sew it into mini chambers like a Patagonia Nano puff. Unfortunately the primaloft was too shredded. Since I have wanted to make a medium weight down jacket to use in cold temps I worked carefully to remove all the primaloft then sewed chambers for down and stuffed the jacket.

Here is a picture of the finished jacket. It has a double layer loft of of 2.75".

LytW8 M50 Down Max Pullover

The new jacket I call the LytW8 Down Max Pullover. It is made from m50 fabric and stuffed with 3.5 oz of 900 fill power down. The jacket weighs 6.5 oz in total. I used it over the past 3 days over the AT in NC/TN and I can say it is much much warmer than my old Montbell down inner ever was.

Here is a picture of original jacket when it was primaloft.

For comparison, here is a picture of my first M50 down jacket that is stuffed with 2.25 oz of down and weighs 5.1 oz. This jacket I would say is only marginally warmer than a Montbell down inner.

What surprised me the most was that it was possible to open up the side seams of a kinsman and with careful planning it could be stuffed with down and then sewn back up.

Jamie

[Ryan Smith]

Nice work Jamie. How long did the whole process take? Seems like would take a while for something so tedious. Definitely paid off though.

Ryan

[Jamie Shortt]

Ryan, Thanks for the reply. I'm fairly slow with my projects. So yes this one took awhile. I bet 10-12 hours in total. First I had to remove all the stitching on the seams that run under the arms and along the sides. This is a French seam so it is double stitched. After that I pulled the primaloft out. It took a fair amount of time pulling it off any place it was actually stitched to fabric. Next was laying out the baffles. I used chalk to draw them onto the shell. Then I stuffed the collar and jacket top front. Next I sewed baffles and stuffed the remaining body. The same was then done to the sleeves. After that I re-sewed the side French seams, but had to do so without the trimming step as I did not want to loose any width.

So yeah it was probably closer to 12 hours when all was done.

Jamie

[And E]

That is so awesome. I can't even imagine tackling a project like that.
Looks very professionally done!

[todd]

Jamie, you have done it again!

Man I have to hand it to ya … a jacket that light with that much down!!! I hope I make a blunder like that!

Positively a GREAT looking jacket – one that will serve you well on colder trips.

[Colin Krusor]

Jamie, that jacket looks great. As others have said, the ratio of fill weight to total weight is very impressive. Nice work.

[Jamie Shortt]

Thanks for the compliments. They motivated me to finally finish instructions for how to make a down pullover. Here is a link to the instructions on my website.

LytW8.commy_gearLytW8 M50 Down Pullover Instructions

Any one wanting to do this I highly recommend completing a synthetic kinsman first from thru-hiker.com. You will learn a lot that will transfer into making a down version.

Jamie

[Derek Weeks]

That's awesome Jamie…..thanks!!

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