New 3.8oz woven UHMWPE pack fabric at RSBTR: worth the money?

[Geoff Caplan]

RSBTR have released an exotic woven UHMWPE fabric with TPU coating on both sides.

If you watch the videos they are claiming it’s durable way beyond its weight, and that this makes it the ultimate pack fabric.

But at $32.00/half yd it’s not an impulse buy.

Great to see high-tech stuff like this on the MYOG market – but would it be worth the extra cost for a high-usage pack? Does anyone have experience with this type of fabric?

https://ripstopbytheroll.com/products/3-9-oz-venom-uhmwpe-tpu-coated

[Eric Blanche]

IDK about the double sided coating. Good for bonding/taping I suppose but I wouldn’t be bonding this material for my uses. In their instagram feed they mentioned that it is possible for them and they may supply this in the future with a single sided coating in the weight range closer to ~3.2oz/sqy. According to them, the base non-coated fabric is only 2.2oz per square yard. Impressive!

Incredible stuff. My backpacks take a max of 2.5 yards of fabric, so.. At $64/yard, I’m getting close to the cost of building a DCF pyramid tarp. I would certainly consider this fabric for portions of a pack build but probably not the main fabric at that cost. 1 yard could probably get me some side pockets, bottom, and if I play my cards right maybe some extra for top of roll top.

 

 

[Geoff Caplan]

Tend to agree – it probably is the best pack fabric we can access at retail quantities – but the cost-benefit won’t make much sense for most people when cheaper fabrics are doing a good-enough job.

As you say, the best uses would probably be for the bottom and for side-pockets.

Of course if I was in the fortunate position where cost was no object, this would be a great option. Would probably last for a decade or two and see me out.

[Adam Kilpatrick]

It looks incredible. Agree though that single sided coating may be better. Does the coating provide UV resistance?

Its at a price point where for a MYOG pack…you definitely don’t want it to be your first build. You want to have it pretty dialed as to how you want your pack. I mean, if you go to the effort of paying for and building a pack out of this indestructable stuff, you’d want to nail it. Otherwise, if something wasn’t quite perfect, you’d have a MYOG pack that you could never wear out, so you’d have to justify spending on the fabric again for the next one… haha.

[Geoff Caplan]

Very true – most of us are looking to make incremental improvements with our designs and this is hardly the right fabric for prototyping.

With this stuff, you are building for the next Millennium!

[Hanz B]

Here’s a pic comparing the fabric to other woven and none woven dyneema I took after it arrived today. Nice how much tighter and organized weave is. I suspect you could build airplane wings out of this stuff

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0SGtnIORGEQBj9

[SIMULACRA]

How about bear/critter bags?

[Doug Coe]

Earlier thread on this topic.

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