Forgive me but this is a pet peeve of mine.
Several members here and in other forums have commented about how unprofessional/inconvenient/stupid is that several manufactures sell tents that are not seam sealed.
Inconvenient I understand, but unprofessional/stupid I do not agree with.
In one forum a comment was "less than honest" and I felt free to translate that into dishonest...
Yet I was the only one to object having folk like Henry Shires (TT) , Ron Moak(SMD) , Glen Siebel (GG), Stephensons, Tin Man (AGG)Ron Bell (MLD) amongst others, called "less than honest".
It has already being pointed out that with silnylon,Epic and several PTFE (Todd-Tex) shelters, to seam seal them you need to set every one up, seal it and then let it dry for at least 24 hours, 48 plus is better. This needs to be done (obviously) indoor. That would need to be a much larger warehouse than the production line itself. And note that I am talking about Chinese wages, too bad if you like your shelter made in the US or UK ...
Now imagine what would happen at the factory/s that produce Black Diamond shelters if they indeed employed people to do that.
A production run in China for one of their shelters should be around 300 at a time. (provably 100 for the Bibler versions ?)
How do you set up , seal, let dry that many shelters (indoor) and keep the costs down ?
Somehow I suspect that doing 100 or so tents in Seattle could be also rather expensive, more than most would want to pay.
Franco

Thanks for the new thread, Franco -- we'd gotten a bit off topic, after all. It's easy to sit in front of a computer and blast Tarptent (and others) for being too lazy to seam seal their tents or to suggest that they're doing a major disservice to their customers by failing to do so. Like you (and Ashley in the previous thread) point out so thoroughly, the process is complicated and potentially very costly. What irks me (and drives me to keep posting about this topic) is that Tarptent is an example of a what a good business can and should be, and the claim that they're somehow ripping off their customers gets under my skin. I had to seam seal the ridiculously expensive (at the time, anyway) TNF Aerohead beast of a tent that I bought back in 1992. Was TNF ripping me off? Those b*st*rds! They should have had big warehouse full of vertical racks for seam sealing their tents in mass!

Edited by EarthDweller on 07/19/2009 20:36:33 MDT.

I can't resist...
1. SMD and Tarptent each offers the ability to have them seam seal your tent for you. The charge is not outrageous and they do a good job.
2. By way of comparison, I seam sealed my TT Contrail yesterday. I spent more time at the hardware store picking up the mineral spirits, silicone caulk and foam brush than I did actually sealing the tent. Honest! It's less than 30 minutes of actual work...more like 15 once you have the sealing mixture ready to go. AND, I did both the sewn seams and stripes on the silnylon floor to reduce the slipping and sliding that are pretty much inevitable in real world tent pitches (i.e. non-level ground).
3. I actually LIKE the idea that the manufacturer lets me decide if my time or my money are more important as it relates to seam sealing.

Ernie
The "less than honest" comment was part of the TT bashing that some regularly indulge in at WB. However the poster inadvertently overlooked that he was having a go at the entire cottage industry plus some.
The funny bit is that one of them has and raves about an SMD shelter . Nothing wrong with that except that his regular rants apply just as much to his own.
William
"SMD and Tarptent each offers the ability to have them seam seal your tent for you. The charge is not outrageous and they do a good job"

Good point ,but I can tell you for a fact that neither could afford to do it for $15 or 20 if every customer opted for that option.

I still like Jack Stevenson's approach :
Seam seal Tent $50 ($20 to Seal Plus Extra $30 Punative (sic) Charge) -
,b>2 Week Delay
http://www.warmlite.com/prices.htm
Franco
BTW, I don't like the idea, just the smell....

Ernie,
Nobody blasted TarpTent in the previous thread. The argument was not manufacturer specific.

Hindsight being 20/20 I would have GLADLY paid someone else to seam seal the Rainbow I purchased.

I followed the directions on seam sealing and was unable to seal the tent to prevent water from intruding into the interior of the Rainbow during a prolonged steady rain.

I spent several hours over the course of several days attempting to do the job and testing with a hose and sprinkler to no avail. After hitting the ridgeline and cross strut six times, the other seams 3 times I gave up.

I sent a couple of emails to tarptent about my issue and never heard back after my last effort at seam sealing. So I returned the tent to backcountryoutlet.com who agreed to take it back for a full refund. I guess in that regard I was lucky. I believe if you purchase from tarptent directly you are SOL if you have problems after you attempt to seal it.

I was just out return shipping, the cost of mineral spirits and the GE silicone II, a bunch of small foam brushes, and several hours.

I didn't find the experience particulary fun and would recommend having someone else do it if you can afford it. Cool shelter, but a bearcat for a greenhorn like me to seam seal and no help from customer service in the end.

I'm going to stick to less "overwhelming" shelters for awhile ;)

Edited by gohawks on 07/19/2009 22:02:26 MDT.

Since you like to post this comment in every forum maybe it will help to know where it started.
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=50690

Maybe it also helps if you realise that the comment "overwhelming" was meant to indicate your frustration at not being able to set up the rain curtain and fold one of the doors as well as seam sealing the Rainbow.
My wife two weeks ago stated that she was "overwhelmed" by her new job. No, she does not work for God nor God like people, she just found it a bit too much to have to learn all sorts of new things all at once after decades of doing something similar. I can assure you that unlike me , English is her first language.
Sorry for having spent the time to set up the tent so that I could take some pictures and try to figure out what went wrong for you.
Franco

Edited by Franco on 07/19/2009 22:41:39 MDT.

Do you like to post the same comments in all of the forums? I read about the Moment in every forum...from you. I'm just wondering.

You seem to take it personal that I was unable to seam seal the tarptent.

I am merely sharing my experience with the product, so that other beginners have other opinions, other than just yours perhaps.

I was frustrated with the tie closure on one side of the Rainbow, as well as the rain curtain/porch. Neither seemed intuitive to me. It would seam that the tie out on the door should be easy, not difficult. I found it was much worse when the fabric was wet. I understood the porch could be finicky. It was an after thought and would take some practice. Those issues really didn't concern me however in the end. They were no big deal.

As far as the shelter goes? It was great. Very cool shelter, with a ton of room and easy as pie to set up.

Seam sealing? Well that was another story for me.

Take it easy big guy and relax man. I guess I should be sorry I didn't drink your kool-aid, but I"m not.

Edited by gohawks on 07/19/2009 23:04:24 MDT.

I think Jay's comments were fair enough. I like hearing about the "niggles" people have with tents, because it means I know what to expect if/when I buy. I take a range of opinions into account, so just because Jay had trouble sealing his rainbow doesn't mean I'll never buy one. (And I'd have to agree that the fact he posted on whiteblaze is kind of irrelevant. He's a forum regular here so I'm happy to hear his opinion... I rarely visit whiteblaze.)

Edited by ashleyb on 07/19/2009 23:51:40 MDT.

Franco, what is your affiliation with TT?

I know Henry a bit better than some and have corresponded with him frequently about photography and tent design for a few years. It just happens that I like tents (particularly but not only Tarptents...) and photography was my trade.
However I used to take "personally" comments about certain camera brands ( at DPReview) and in particular I dislike the manufacturers/wholesalers/retailers are all there to rip me off type comments. See todays thread for example:http://bushwalk-tasmania.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2437

a bit long and mostly an Aussie thing but it might give you an idea of how I think.

I don't also have any interest with Thermarest, the reason I got annoyed with several posters was because of all the negative comments about a product that nobody there (at WB) had tested.

Franco
BTW today I learned what "drinking the Kool Aid " means. Not part of our vernacular, but now I know...

Nobody blasted TarpTent in the previous thread. The argument was not manufacturer specific.

While that's true on the face of things, Tarptent (whose tents require seam sealing) and MSR (whose don't) were the implied subjects of thread. Nonetheless, you did make a point of extending your criticism to all manufacturers who don't seam seal their tents -- perhaps I got a little hot under the collar and lost sight of that. Then again, any criticism of the practice of not seam sealing is, to a certain degree, inevitably targeted at the handful of cottage gear manufacturers like Tarptent -- most designs from the big guys incorporate heavier fabrics that can be seam taped. Black Diamond, who uses Epic, is the only exception that I can think of, but I'm no expert on the subject -- there may be more. It's worth noting that, before tents incorporated seam tape, even the big guys required the end users to seam seal their tent.

Well, I wasn't trying to throw any company or market segment in particular under the bus at all - Actually I have had to seam seal just as many shelters from the "Big guys" as the "Small guys". And I am equally confused about having to do the process myself from both. :)

FWIW - I know of a person that recently did not purchase a shelter from a Cottage Maker simply based on the fact that it does not come seam sealed. They selected a shelter from a much larger company that comes taped instead. I informed them that it wasn't hard to seal at home and that they could even pay extra to have it seam sealed at the factory, but they didn't want to mess with the hassle. They just wanted to type in their credit card info, click order and have a fully water proof shelter arrive at their door Friday evening that they could use that night. Personally I think they're just lazy and don't know what they're missing, but that's me. ;)

Well, I wasn't trying to throw any company or market segment in particular under the bus at all.

I think we're coming at the issue from different perspectives, Aaron, and I've no doubt gotten a bit argumentative about a topic that I really don't find all that interesting. I think you're seeing the issue as a consumer, as we all are of course. I'm looking at the issue from the perspective of the manufacturer, a natural tendency since I've owned a small business for nearly 10 years now. What will ultimately determine the direction of the market are the everyday decisions from consumers like the one you mentioned.

I haven't been following this thread and its various "political" nuances, but have some thoughts on seam sealing tents.

What a lot of people either don't know or forgot is that until a few years ago (10 or 15 years?), no tents came seam sealed. If you bought a tent, you had to get out there with your seam grip and seal it up. Marmot, Sierra Designs, Mountain Hardwear, Moss, whoever. So this whole taped-seam thing we see now on the market is a new development. Most people I meet on the retail end still expect to seam seal their tents, and are pleasantly surprised to find out that they don't. Setting up a tent and spending even an hour sealing it is no big deal. It's part of a process. It's taking care of equipment. Do you dry your tent when you get home from a trip? Seam sealing is the same kind of thing, except you're only going to do it once. Frankly, I always kind of enjoyed the process. "Getting all my ducks in a row," as it were. More hands on, less hands off.

As I work on prototypes for a prospective gear company I'm trying to figure out what kind of approach to take with tent seams. Large-scale manufacturers are taping their seams. To be efficient in doing that you probably need a $5 million dollar machine... or I could sit there with a mini iron for a few hours taping each tent... or I could just let people seam grip their tents. One thing about sealants: there's no way to get them on perfectly, the presentation doesn't say "professional." Not like taped seams, anyway. So if I did use something like seam grip on a commercially produced tent, I can guarantee that customers would quibble about the smoothness and quality of the application. And that's fine, but it's not something I want to toy with. There is also the implied cost differential between US labor and Chinese labor, along with the time investment itself, and the equipment investment in sealing the seams. In other words, the cost of producing a tent in the US is greater anyway; if you further add cost of taping seams, the cost of the tent will go above what most people are willing to pay. I don't think it's a stretch to say that a process like taping seams could add $50 to a tent's bottom line. Is it worth that much to you?

Anyhoozit...

Edited by 4quietwoods on 07/21/2009 09:33:37 MDT.

"What a lot of people either don't know or forgot is that until a few years ago (10 or 15 years?), no tents came seam sealed."

Unless it was a Hilleberg....;)

OK, David, busted! I shoulda said -almost- no tents...

Crap, I didn't see this thread and posted my seam sealing rant under the Tarptent vs MSR thread...sorry about that. Anyway, I think Brad summed it up really good. I have always expected to have to seam seal a tent, so when I bought my 2 Tarptents it didn't bother me.

I have to partially agree with Franco in that I visit WB frequently, and the spin put on having to seam seal a Tarptent there was definitely negative to the point of making the cottage gear manufacturers sound like they are ripping everyone off. I just found this kind of sad because there are a lot of people that will read those posts, and may be turned off to certain manufacturers.

At any rate, that was WB and this is BPL. Seems like there has been a much more humane discussion on seam sealing here...at least so far.

Yesterday I got my Thermarest Prolite out to do an inflation test (vs a couple of other mats, for another forum question)
I noticed that I had applied to it more than a reasonable amount of seam seal striping to stop it from sliding on the silnylon floor ( of my Lighthouse at the time)
That reminded me the seam sealing feast of a particular week end. I did a Bibler tent for a mate, so having well over a tube of sealant left, (one is supplied by Bibler, nice touch at $1300 AU for the tent) and because I was in the mood, I did all of the seem of my ULA Circuit, turning it inside out (no idea if it has made any difference, I use a trash bag as a liner) the stitching on a few pair of shoes, my mittens and attempted to repair a couple of S2S CorduraSil stuff sacs. So, well.... I kind of like the idea.
Franco

Franco, I'm absolutely dumbfounded if you sealed that much stuff with one tube! Was it one of the gigantic tubes? I do read the "well over a tube" bit, so perhaps you just started off with a few? I used to use a couple of the 1-oz tubes per tent, hitting all potentially exposed seams, critical seams inside and out. If there's a way to cover the same area with half a tube and equivalent effectiveness and durability, I'd love to know.

Cheers-
Brad