SMD product durability

I've read about both good and sloppy workmanship re. SMD — however, mostly good and only a handful about "loose stitchings".

In my own case, I found my Lunar Solo tent very well made. No complaints about workmanship whatsoever.

I have a Lunar Solo, Gatewood Cape, Starlite and Essence.

The construction and sewing is very good.

The Dyneema Grid and silnylon frabric that he uses is state of art.

The design is excellent. This is gear designed by a thru-hiker for thru-hikers. There are probably better gear choices for climbers, ski touring, and bush-bashers.

The SMD weakness is that sometimes the first generation gear design is not polished. It is functional but might have some irritating quirks.

Ryley,

Sometimes when a snowballs rolling down a slope gathering size and speed it’s best to just get out of the way. Unfortunately Adam had a few basic problems with some extremely new pieces of gear. His negative reaction snowballed when he didn’t get the kind of instant response he expected. He works for Patagonia with is a very large organization. Six Moon Designs is still a one man operation. By any stretch of the imagination there will be differences.

I did attempt respond timely to each inquiry, which can be difficult when one person is out on a thru-hike. All of the gear was promptly repaired and returned within days of its arrival. There was one issue with the mesh we used on the Essence packs. It has been documented also by Will in his review. While it is a stiff fiber mesh and initially tested well, it didn’t work well when subject to Velcro. Since I don’t put items with Velcro in the outside pockets I didn’t know about this issue until too late. We’ve replaced the mesh on the new Essences with the heavier but tried and true mesh used on the Comet and Starlite packs.

About 6 months ago we changed the thread used to construct our packs. Our original packs were constructed using #69 Nylon thread, which is extremely strong. Somewhere along the line and unbeknown to us, our manufacture started using a lighter weight thread, probably by accident. Going back to the stronger thread improves seam strength particularly on high stress areas where buckles terminate. When we discovered the problem, we re-stitched the stress areas of all packs within our inventory. I’ve also done extensive post production bar tacking when it was discovered they were missed in the production cycle.

I do design gear for the long distance hiker, and will continue to push the envelope on designs. If I don’t, who will? Does North Face, Kelty or even Patagonia push the state of the art? I also stand behind our products. When I’ve released what we felt as dud products, I’ve offered generous trade-ins so people could upgrade to the latest versions. That’s a practice I’ve not seen adopted by anyone else.

SMD is not perfect, but I do listen and respond quickly. Most of our enhancements to our ground breaking designs are via user feedback. Aside from a few of us small manufactures like Glen, Brian, Henry, myself and a few others, how often have you been able to have direct communication with the designer?

Ron Moak

Ryley,

if i may put in my two shekels, here is my take on this.

Search the Forums for SMD, or Six Moon Designs, or Moak, or any of the SMD products, e.g. Lunar Solo. You could also use both the Forum and Reader Review indices to locate the appropriate Threads and Reviews.

See what owners of SMD gear say about the SMD products, and the SMD owner (viz. Mr. Moak).

Then search the Forums for "Big Sky" and see what people have to say about Big Sky.

Now think about this. After reading about the flak that Big Sky and Mr. Molen are getting, is it reasonable to assume that Mr. Moak and SMD could get away with less flak if they truly had shoddy gear and/or poor customer service?

i rest my case.

Since Adam posted the following comments on the Essence Pack on the “Review Section” I felt I needed to reply directly.

>> The other weak point of this pack was the mesh for the side pockets, which would completely blow out every 700 miles. When this occurred originally on a pack that now was missing a pack strap and mesh on both sides I emailed the manufacturer. The response was that he was able to perform any and all repairs. I mailed it in and it was returned without the mesh being repaired.<<

That is technically correct. At the time I had the conversation with Adam before receiving the packs for repair, I was unaware that the mesh had blown out. I don’t believe he mentioned it to me during our conversation. If he had I would have informed him of the difficult nature of the repair (the mesh is sewn into the core of the pack with multiple stitch lines, bar tacks and a top binding) and possible solutions for repair. Also that the mesh wasn't covered under warranty.

When I received the pack it was impossible to contact Adam as he was hiking. To properly repair the pack would have meant deconstructing the pack to properly replace the mesh. Since we a lighter fabric on the pack, deconstruction and re-sewing will weaken the seams. The other option is to cut away the existing mesh and sew in a new pocket inside of the seams lines of the pack. This would have produced a workable pocket but would not look cosmetically very good.

Since we don’t warranty the mesh fabric and I didn’t wish to do a patch job on the pack without talking to Adam, who was unavailable to contact. I chose to fix all the standard warranty problems with the pack and return it quickly.

>> This was disappointing, as I couldn’t figure out why I was told the repair would be done, then it wasn’t. I was told that it wasn’t repaired because it wasn’t a warranty issue. This was a let down as there was no note in the return telling me as to why this wasn’t repaired as stated. When I finally contacted the manufacturer later on down the trail my only option was to mail it back a second time, so now I was mailing the same pack in circles. My biggest problem with this was that I used the one pocket for a water bottle and the other for my fuel. To mail a pack back to a thru hiker in a non-working condition after offering to do “any and all repairs” is unacceptable. I was also told it was unrepairable without major structural work. This ended up being a quick repair again performed by a local seamstress, who used a double layer mesh fabric that was both more durable and lighter than SMD’s. <<

Adam did have the mesh repaired by someone. They took apart the pack, replaced the mesh then attempted to reconstruct the pack. Unfortunately since they weren’t careful to note how the pack was origionally assembled when they deconstructed the pack they sewed it back together incorrectly.

When I received the improperly repaired pack again the second time I had to completely deconstruct two major areas of the pack. This was needed in order to properly bring the pack back to useable condition. Total time to repair the repair was about 90 minutes. Total time for repair on all of Adams other SMD products (GW Cape, 2nd Essence and Lunar Solo) less than 10 minutes. Total amount charged to Adam for the 90 minutes of non warranty repairs, $0.

I do regret the miscommunications. Managing expectations is not an easy task and one that’s made that much more difficult when it’s further complicated by the difficulty of communicating from the trail. I don’t believe at anytime I misrepresented the capabilities of the pack. Since it was a new pack and we didn’t fully know what to expect under long term stress.

The Essence was designed from the start to be both light yet more durable than other members of its class. As such, it uses a more substantial fabric (70D Silicon Nylon vs. 30D Silicon Nylon used on many similar packs in its class) for the body of the pack. It also incorporates some 26 bar tacks in stress areas. It also uses heavier webbing and buckles than found on similar SUL packs. I was concerned about the light buckles we used on the pack, but they have been surprisingly resilient. They do occasionally pop open under stress but we’ve have very few breakages. And yes after over a years search, we were able to finally secure a better buckle from Asia.

I have attempted to address all of the issues raised by Adam and others to the Essence in the newer version of the pack to be released next month. Is it perfect? Probably not, but we’ll keep trying.

Ron Moak

Ron,

Thanks so much for the in-depth replies. As I said in my original post, I didn't think this was the standard for your products, more of an outlier. I think the other positive posts in this thread, not to mention reviews in various other places, provide more weight.

PJ: I did search the forums a bit actually, but most posts don't get into durability/construction too much. Usually it's more like "ohh, shiny new gear!"… which I totally understand :)

Ryley

Ryley,

you're absolutely right about that.

it's the silence though about long term durability that speaks loudly.

sorry i wasn't clearer. my point was merely supposed to be, and i guess i wasn't clear enough, with all of the flak Big Sky has taken here for customer service problems, i'd think that IF SMD had problems with either durability or Cust. Srv., that we'd have seen a whole lotta' flak here about SMD also. I think that there have been a fair number of posts on use of the Gatewood Cape and more particularly the Lunar Solo. Though perhaps not enough of them after a lengthy Thru-Hike is your point if i read your words correctly.

Sure, my point is an argument from lack of evidence, i agree, but sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Maybe this is one of the cases?

Ah I see what you were getting at. I think you're probably right that the silence was speaking… I guess now, volumes of words will be speaking :) And future searchers on the topic will have something to find…

I also hiked the PCT this past summer, and started with the Essence and a 9 lbs plus change base weight. By around mile 700, stitches on both ends of the pack straps were unraveling at a worrying rate, the mesh was wearing significantly, and there was a hole between the top pocket and the pack's main body. I bought and used a Vapor Trail for next ~2000 miles.

I never contected Ron Moak, so I can't make any comments on customer service. Also, as Ron points out, the new version of the pack will likely resolve many of the complaints leveled at the early '06 model.