I've been playing around with cuben lately, I've made a tarp and a few stuff sacks. I've also been doing some tests as to adhesion strength and use as well as doing some thinking and research.
I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on the following idea…
Not all taped junctions of cuben require the strength of adhesion that the popular 9485 tape provides, which is roughly rated at 150oz/in, for some applications 25oz/in, which many of the cheaper 2mil tape provides. Has anyone already played with using these different tapes for applications in their cuben projects where the stronger adhesion is not required, and if so, what has been your success?
My thoughts are that for things like edge folds, "straps" (I don't know if there is a more commonly used term for creating grosgrain replacements by taping a couple 1/2" strips of cuben together), stuff sack edges, etc. that the cheaper lower strength tapes would be more than strong enough since these parts of the gear see little, if any, shear stress on the tape.
I'd even go so far as to conjecture that "patches" that do not see much shear stress on the tape could also use a weaker tape, if not as low as 25oz/in, perhaps 60oz/in might be enough.
Thoughts?
