Making Cuben Airtight

[Shawn Forry]

Plan on trying to make a sleeping pad out of cuben and wonder if anyone has any thoughts or experienced with getting an airtight seal with the seams. Been chatting with Joe over at zpacks and he tried a small sample just using his cuben tape that he sells and was unsuccessful in getting a good seal. Planning on using 1.5 cuben, a GG thinlite and a salvaged thermarest valve as the basis. Should be in the 4oz range for a 3/4 pad.

Thanks Shawn

[peter kvamme]

Huzefa reports using 1" 3M 9485 and 1" 3M 9088 as adhesive in his cuben/down air pad. Not sure what tape z-packs uses, but these might be worth a try.

[Steven Evans]

From my experience, if you want a truly airtight seal (one that you can rely on) you are going to want to use an adhesive as opposed to a tape. I use the Hysol stuff and can get it airtight. Huzefa inquired with me about it so I believe he plans on using (or testing) the same stuff on his sleep pads, but he can chime in to verify.

[Shawn Forry]

Hey Steve, do you have any more info of which hysol product is being used? Just doing a quick search, seems like there is a lot of options out there.

Shawn

[Steven Evans]

Read this thread here, everything I know about bonding cuben is in it.

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=20093

[Gary Boyd]

I think we all agreed that peel strength was the main problem with the cuben air mattress, and with the UL heat sealable nylon that one of the other members is working with, it's practicality in the usage has become minimal. In order to be more durable you would have to use heavier cuben, and even then abrasion resistance is low. That being said I would still love to see this become practical.

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