I worship you! Seriously, I'm laboring over making a bottle holster for a shoulder strap, so seeing your professional looking MYOG stuff is very inspiring.
Stahl

Very nice work, Sam. I'm personally most impressed by your shelter. For anyone who has ever tried to build and design a shelter, especially a tunnel tent, trying to get the angles in the pattern right is one of the biggest hurdles. That and trying to figure out how to get the tent poles to fit in the sleeves without distorting the fabric. Good job!

Did you follow Roger Caffin's page about building tunnel tents? It looks like one of his type of designs, especially the pointed arch.

Are you happy with the design of the vents? That's one place I, too, had a lot of trouble trying to get right. I don't know why it's so hard, it looks easy enough!

Edited by butuki on 02/28/2011 17:43:25 MST.

Sam,

I just devoured your blog in one sitting. Great stuff! Please post more on the construction techniques and design rationales as you make more gear. Maybe some in process photos. I eat that stuff up. Looking forward to updates!

Take care.

Pilate

Edited by deGuerre on 02/28/2011 17:54:44 MST.

Sam, Your blog has been really inspiring. Great job on the Cuben kit you have made so far. Very Impressed!!!!! I'll have to give that a go myself.

Scott

I'll reiterate what everyone else has already said-Great job! I'm also very intrigued by the tunnel tent as I think it could be an excellent lightweight family tent with my two little ones based on your listed dimensions. Do you have a pattern for it or for download as I think in cuben and with CF poles it could hit the low 2 lb mark which would be a dream! Also the cuben would require less sewing as it could be bonded which would also be nice. Thanks again and keep up the fantastic work!

Nice job with the gear and the blog.

Regarding the cuben rain pants, I made some as well a few months back.
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/xdpy/forum_thread/41126/index.html

An idea for you is to consider making them out of non-transparent cuben so you can wear them without your regular hiking pants underneath. With cuben being non-breathable, if you hike for an extended period of time with your cuben rain pants over top of your regular hiking pants, then the regular pants will slowly get quite damp/wet from your natural perspiration. At the end of the day, your hiking pants may be quite wet which is avoidable. If you use non-transparent cuben, you can omit wearing your hiking pants underneath without risk of getting charged with indecent exposure. This keeps you cooler when it's muggy out, and it keeps your regular pants dry for wearing later.

I made my cuben rain pants from black CT3.5K.18 which is twice the weight of your cuben, but it's opaque and far stronger and more durable. You could use a colored lighter variant of cuben, but the lighter variants of cuben are all quite transparent, so you really need to go to CT3.5K.18 to get material that isn't see-thru. The total weight of my pants is 2.5oz (71g) which is double yours, but they should last a very long time and they'll permit me to keep my regular hiking pants dry. Then again, if you really only use these very rarely then maybe it's not worth the hassle/money/weight to make a non-transparent pair.