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According to MSR, my tent fly (Freelight 2) is made of 15D ripstop nylon 1200mm Xtreme Shield™ polyurethane & silicone. Is this silnylon? I’m trying to figure out what kind of Tenacious Tape patches to get for my repair kit. I tried to reach the company but they haven’t been responding. Thanks!
Get the clear Tenacious Tape. It will absolutely work, I’ve used it on a tent fly hole, and it’s what NEMO uses for tents returned to them for repairs.
I’ve had no luck using any kind of patches on the Kerlon flys of my Hilleberg tents—silicone coated—including tenacious tape and Tear Aid Types A or B. They always fall off eventually. A better system which works is to coat a patch with McNett’s Silnet seam sealer and then apply.
Tipi is right, as far as trying to use an acrylic adhesive on a silicone surface goes. This combination is KNOWN to not work. We have known this for decades.
An acrylic or PU adhesive will work very well on most any other surface. If you have a PU/Si coated fabric and the PU side is just PU (or TPU) with no silicone, then it will work.
For silicone surfaces you can only use a siloxane adhesive. There are plenty of them around these days, even in hardware shops. Yes, they are probably a bit more expensive than the acrylic ones, but they work.
Cheers
Hi Roger,
There was a recent thread mentioning “GEAR AID Tenacious Tape Patches for Silicone Tent and Tarp Repair.” Unlike the regular Tenacious Tape, it’s supposed to work on silnylon tents and tarps. It think it’s fairly recent, and is available from Lightheart Gear, and Amazon of course, if you want to gamble on their ‘marketplace.’
GEAR AID Tenacious Tape Patches for Silicone Tent and Tarp Repair.
Yes, that’s what I use.
Hi Sam
I think I was careful to only discuss the adhesives in general, and to not mention any particular brand of patch.Originally the only patches available had an acrylic adhesive, and users had problems using them on silnylon. To be sure, some of them were pretty good on non-silicone surfaces. But more recently some vendors have seen the writing on the wall and started making patches with siloxane adhesives. Yay for progress!
Cheers
I haven’t used these but here is a link to the product people are talking about:
https://www.gearaid.com/products/tenacious-tape-patch-silnylon
litesmith has always shipped very quickly if that matters: https://www.litesmith.com/tenacious-tape-silnylon-patches/
To the OP: I don’t know what your fabric is. That description is vague but I think the typical application of fabrics that use polyurethane and silicone is to put one on each side. I think the silicone goes on the outside. Relevant conversation in this thread: https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/silpoly-rainshell-seam-sealing-advice-please/
>> Would that be in the same ballpark as polysiloxane sealer Roger?
I am guessing that the answer is yes, but I can not be sure. Siloxane forms a polymer but there are thousands of variations in that group. Many are called ‘polysiloxane’.Common polymers have a carbon-carbon backbone, but siloxanes have a silicone-oxygen one.
Cheers
The options I’ve been debating are the standard Tenacious Tape and their silnylon version, as was referenced above. Do folks think the silnylon version would be the right choice or do we not know enough about the fabric in question? I always enjoy the deeply analytical and technical path these threads often follow, but once we started talking acrylics, PU, and polymers y’all kind of lost me…
Take a few inches of kitchen-grade sticky tape and attach it to your XXX. If the tape sticks well, it is not silicone. If the attachment is weak and the tape is easily removed, then it probably IS silicone.
That is all you need to know.
Cheers
I’m not sure what kitchen-grade sticky tape is but I’m assuming I don’t have any on hand. I just applied a regular Tenacious Tape patch to my tent fly and after a few minutes it’s still rather easy to remove. Does it usually take time to cure or should I assume this means I have silicone and should go with the other kind of repair tape I have? Thanks all!
Scotch tape, sticky tape, adhesive tape: what you can buy at the local newsagent or supermarket. Stuff you would normally stick to paper.
>> after a few minutes it’s still rather easy to remove
I would say that you do have a silnylon fabric. Can you get some of the Tenacious Tape meant for silnylon and try it?” Tenacious Tape now sticks to silicone-treated fabrics. Simply peel-and-stick our Silnylon Patches to repair a hole in ultralight silnylon tents, tarps, and more. Backed by a silicone-based adhesive, the Silnylon Patches won’t let you down.”
Cheers
Good.
However, a caution: the siloxane adhesive work slowly. The initial ‘tack’ is only medium; full strength adhesion requires a slow chemical (silicone polymer) reaction which can take up to 72 hours to finish.Cheers
Where can I buy a roll or sections of Dyneema tape?
If you mean the single sided stuff, Zpacks have it.
Edit: Ripstop by the Roll has both single sided and double sided.
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