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I am doing some coursework and have an essay I would like to center around the adaptation of Cuben Fiber into backpacking gear. I am looking for any knowledge or resources on how it came to be. Who was the first to market it? What sort of gear? Was it initially successful, and what got it to the level it is at now? Any insight, even if just your recollection, would be very helpful. Thanks!
Long before it went to market, Bill Fornshell started myoging his own gear. It has been around since early 2000’s. It will take more looking on this site to find out when zpacks bolted from silnylon and went entirely cuben, maybe 2008-ish. Ryan or someone wrote an article about the by-out of the Cuben company and that likely has history there.
https://backpackinglight.com/cuben-fiber-dyneema-ultralight-film-outdoor-gear-apparel-cottage/
https://backpackinglight.com/members/bfornshell/forums/
http://ultraliteskunkworks.blogspot.com/
https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/1503/#post-1344085 Oct 2005 was close to time it was going to be sold to consumers, on the internet.
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I don’t remember anyone using Cuben Fiber for backpacking stuff before Bill Fornshell did.
What a innovator! SSUL before the terms even existed. His copy of a GG G6 weighed 1.96 oz.
I dearly miss his contributions.
Joshua,
Take a look at this thread :
https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/2346/
note :
“I have been dealing with Cuben Corp since Sep or Oct of 2004.” (Bill Fornshell)
He started to make stuff with it in 2006 (if I have that right…)
He mentions there Paul Kaercher, a friend of his, as another early user.
Here is one of the many BF projects :
He made several packs, rain gear, stuff sacks , tarps …
here is another one , a 15.5oz quilt (blue CF !):
a 2008 19oz sleeping bag
I love this community, thank you all so much. Does anyone have any idea how Bill came to learn about Cuben Fiber?
It has been noted at White Blaze that Joe Valesko (ZPacks) was selling Cuben Fiber stuff sacks in 2005.
Joe Valesko , from this :
to this :
Seeing those pictures showing Zpacks evolution makes me very happy. I have dealt with Joe Velasko and his team many times and they have always been extremely helpful. Most of my dealings have been buying materials for my own MYOG projects, and all the time Joe has been very responsive and generous giving advise, etc. I like that they are always tweeking and improving their products. I always look them up for ideas and inspiration.
Ultralight Skunkworks projects were the best!
This is how I remember it. A long time ago in a galaxy …
I am unsure about any DYI experimentation pre 2005. I know Bill (and maybe a few other DYIers) were was doing something with it about that time. Not sure the exact dates, could have been be late 2004.
Some online forum chatter started picking up about it early 2005.
BPL store was selling a few Cuben tarps by mid 20o5 I think. (Could I be recalling the date wrong – few months or a year off? ) They outsourced the sewing of it to Dave at Oware (+ possibly others at various times) but Dave was not making anything from it under his company name until quite a while later. Those first ones were only sewn and required user seam sealing. The BPL store stopped selling them within a couple of years. I can’t remember if it was a supplier problem getting them sewn or was concurrent with the end of the BPL store. Later in 2007? 2008? I had to decline the offer to sew them for BPL as I was already working three jobs and 70hrs per week.
MLD started selling Cuben Fiber products mid/late 2005, a few months after BPL. We say BPL store was first. MLD was the second company behind BPL to do so. Within a short time we had a wide range of Cuben Fiber gear including tarps, shelters, packs and stuff sacks. Back then the main Cuben Fiber tarp material was called N5K.08 and cost 13.37p/y. (From a July 2005 email I have with Chris Adams at Cubic Tech was when we bought our first batch.) We included bonded shelter seams + sewing from the start using 3M tape. We may have been selling it as only custom at the start, as I can not see it on the waybackmachine in 2005, but I know were were making some stuff from it in 2005. We branded it Spectralite.60 back then because Cuben Fiber was a confusing name.
Some short time aftter that Joe – later Zpacks- and a few others started selling a few DCF products on ebay I think and a bit later in mid 2006 on the first Zpacks website. I recall SMD experimenting with it a lot the end of that decade.
No doubt a lot more interesting stories and data points of interest in those early years of Cuben development. But based on my website and email data and old man memory, we claim MLD is the oldest company to continuously and still be making DCF products and were the first to bond shelter seams and build Cuben packs.
Joshua- using the waybackmachine you can start seeing some of our Cuben Fiber / Spectralite.60 gear listed in 2007 for sure, but I know we did make some earlier and guess it was custom as I did not update the website as often thena nd we got a lot of custom orders then.
By about 2009 or about that it had fully replaced the Spintex.75 as the main UL shelter fabric that had rulled since 2002 in BPL, MLD and GG tarps/shelters.
All Bill Fornshell, what a legend. His experiments with external frame packs were awesome too. And the balloon bed mattress!
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