My Lightheart Gear Solo tent has been patiently waiting to get seam sealed since Christmas. My work schedule, family events and the weather have all kept me from sealing the seams of my tent until now.



The aliens have not landed! That other worldly looking thing in the back of the picture is a set of "work lights" on the top of a ladder. ;-)

I started setting up immediately after a quick and early supper around 5:pm. I used my patio's supports as tie off points. I needed an "earthen base" to provide a stable base for the center support of my tent.



I used a flower pot full of potting soil to give me that earthen base. Wooden dowels and some PVC pipe and fittings were put together to take the place of the usual trekking pole and pole connector that support the tent in actual use. I padded the top of my temporary work support with some folded towels.



I used Permatex Flowable Windshield Sealant applied with a disposable foam rubber brush. There was no mixing, guessing or mess. There was a very mild detectable odor but nothing like a mixture of mineral spirits and silicone caulking.

My patio is my work space. Whenever it rains significantly the floor of my patio tends to hold some water. This is why I supported my tent "in space" for this project.

It is rather amusing that supported in this manner my Lightheart Gear Solo tent does remind me of the spaceship in the movie Flight of the Navigator. ;-)



Happy Mardi Gras everyone!

Party On,

Newton

Nice job. Hopefully your tent doesn't attract alien visitors when you've got it pitched in the field....just something to imagine as you're trying to fall asleep.

So the Permatex Flowable Windshield Sealant works well? How thin is the stuff? The lack of mixing is attractive, but does it go on kinda thick? Did you happen to weigh your tent before/after?

@Dan,
It's thicker than a home concoction, but paints on pretty thin using a small foam brush. I treated a 5 x8 poncho tarp (hood, ridgeline, and all stitching around the perimeter) and a backpack with it. I used less than a third of a tube for both projects. Weight gain on the tarp was 0.4 oz.

Dandy Dan,

Ditto to what Ike said about the application of the sealant.

"Did you happen to weigh your tent before/after"?

I did not weigh my tent before but it is advertised as 27 ounces. I believe that is with the lines attached that come on it from Lightheart Gear.

As far as the after weight goes the tent is still in its state of suspension. LOL

So, no I haven't it weighed it after the seam sealing. I want the sealant to cure for at least 24 hours before I take it down and attempt to fold it up.

I'll post a weight after seam sealing later.

Party On,

Newton

Cool....let us know if the stuff remains a bit sticky and needs a dusting with climbers chalk or not.

Dandy Dan,

Here are some surprising figures.

The weight of my tent stuff sack is .50 oz.

The weight of my seam sealed tent in the stuff sack is 27.55 ounces. So I have to conclude that my seam sealed tent weighs 27.05 ounces alone. ;-)

The PVC trekking pole "connector" weighs .85 oz. So in total my seam sealed tent in the stuff sack with the connector weighs in total 28.40 ounces. I let the scale tell me this and then I did the math and both methods are in agreement.

After curing all night in 60% to 71% relative humidity and temperatures from the low 60's to 71 degrees F. I can report that there is no tackiness of the cured sealant.

Sometimes you just get lucky! ;-)

Party On,

Newton

John,

Just to be sure you might want to set up your tent inside out and apply sealant to the inside of the seams. Belt-and-suspenders sorta thing...

That might be a hard tent to set up inside out. I hope thinking about this does not result in me my lightheart and the living room floor Also the netting is sew to the main seam inside

Edited by mtmnmark on 02/21/2012 21:35:38 MST.

Like Mark said...



All but the two shorter side seams of the fly are inaccessible from the inside. The main seam runs down the center the full length of the tent. It is "bound" as shown in the picture.

I've had really good success in the past with sealing only the outside of silnylon seams in the past.

McNett's instructions for their SilNet product would seem to agree with Eric.

I found this info on the DE Maritime site.

"3. Using the brush, apply a thin coat to all the exterior fly seams. This may take some time, so if the mixture starts to thicken in the pot due to evaporation of solvent, mix in a few more drops of solvent. Some manufacturers of seam sealant suggest applying sealant to the inside of the fly seams, but we have not found that this provides any noticeable improvement".

Party On,

Newton

Dan Durston, I recently seam sealed a tt rainbow with permatex, it's fine, either use the method this person did, which isn't a bad idea, given you'll get finer control over the dispersion, or just squeeze out a very narrow bead using the applicator tip cut very small opening, then rub that into the seams and spaces in the seams.

Permatex is easy to work with, and as I saw noted in various threads on mixing up your own batch vs permatex, this stuff is actually designed to be flowable, whereas the mixtures people make using silicone/thinner aren't, GE I seem to recall specifically states that thinning silicone per se isn't recommended because it won't be the same in terms of durability. Can't remember the specifics but it made sense to me.

My feeling after watching how tt seals theirs vs using permatex is that it's the same old issue with seam sealing on a commercial level (and why back in the day, pre taping, tents were almost never seam sealed on purchase), speed/efficiency/cosmetics vs performance and durability. Ie, it's super fast to put on a thin mixture with that applicator, even if that mixture won't last that long, and that thin mixture is almost invisible on the tent after application. Permatex is most definitely not invisible, but why should anyone care about that unless wanting to resell at highest price. Personally, I'd rather get a slightly messy looking but durably sealed tent than a tent where I have to redo it over flaked off silicone remnants. In the future I'd pick a permatex sealed tent over a mixture sealed one, in general, it's just not that easy to mess up with permatex, the stuff is easy to apply and spread, and it's not really possible to mess up the mixture process since there is none.

I found it very hard to avoid dripping when using the tube directly, because the stuff keeps flowing a bit after you lift off the applicator tip, caused some drips on the tent, but again, who cares, those spots are now just more waterproof, after I smeared them out, heh.

I rubbed in the permatex with my finger using a cut off tip of a mechanics latex glove to avoid skin contact, and did it outside.

The tent dried / cured outside in the shade mostly during some sunny days recently, and came out with no tackiness. On the other hand, I've sealed some silnylon rainpants I made just to see how that would work, and dried/cured them inside, and the seams were a bit tacky, but nothing requiring talcum powder to deal with.

If you can't find permatex, which I had difficulty locating, there's another product out there at auto parts stores by another brand, also called flowable silicone, and I read both msds pdfs, they are clearly the same, and probably use the same fluid from the same source given how identicaly the data sheets were.

I didn't really care about the weight but I think it might have added an ounce or so, but I did a very robust sealing job because the rainbow has some difficult stitching re full sealing, so I did some areas inside and outside, and used a fair amount of the sealer. In general the listed weights on tents should always be given with +-5%, that's a law in Norway, you can't say something like this weighs x grams, it never does unless it's a coincidence, you have to say it weighs x grams +-5%, or maybe 10%, can't remember, I know my tt rainbow weighed about 2oz more than listed on tt site prior to sealing, materials vary slightly.

I'd also say that the permatex definitely has increased the strength of the seams/stitching, it's thick enough to really be noticeable when it dries, I can't really see the super thin mixtures strengthening the actual stitching that much, mabye a bit, but not a lot.

[checked]Oh, I checked, the tube is 1.5 ounce net, I used probably about 1 oz total sealing the rainbow, maybe a bit less, since the same tube also sealed some rain pants and most of some pouches I'd made. I don't know how much weight silicone loses when it cures, must be something, so I'd say it's safe to say the tent gained maybe .75oz total, and that's with very solid seam sealing, including, following franco's advice, the bottom seams and tieouts.

Edited by hhope on 02/22/2012 12:10:46 MST.

Looks like the perfect tent for backpacking on Mars. :)

Ground control to Major Tom...



10 - 9 - 8 - 7... ;-)

Party On,

Newton

What is bothersome about the mineral spirits thing is that all the mineral spirits I've seen have a thin oily quality. Oil, no matter how thin, doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd want to use as a sealant to adhere to anything.
Permatex or S-to-S sil sealer, applied thinly, but with an implement that will get it into the threads and stitch holes: +1.
The SilNet is a little too thick for that.
Tried campstove fuel, but the sil-gas mixture did not adhere very well either.
Has anyone tried one of the silicone glues, like GE, as a sealer?
BTW, John - nice looking tent. Will there be a funeral for the MYOG one?
Will aliens be there?

Edited by scfhome on 02/23/2012 19:26:27 MST.

Hi Sam,

"Will there be a funeral for the MYOG one? Will aliens be there"? LOL

No funeral in the near future for the MYOG tarp. I found a new home for it on gear swap.

Thanks for the kind words Sam.
Here is a more formal picture of a Lightheart Gear Solo Tent like mine minus the aliens. ;-)



It's going out on the trail this weekend for a short 24 hour run in the Kissatchie Wilderness.

Party On,

Newton

Edited by Newton on 02/23/2012 19:50:48 MST.