Anybody have experience, good or bad, with using bottle cap button tie outs on a sil tarp, particularly xenon?
Anybody have experience, good or bad, with using bottle cap button tie outs on a sil tarp, particularly xenon?
You can walk in another person's shoes, but only with your feet
I'm not a big fan of using button type tie-outs on a tarp if I can avoid them because they bunch up the tarp and it's hard to get nice tight pitch. That being said, I don't know why plastic bottle caps wouldn't work fine. I've always used rocks or tree cones or wads of natural material. Most silnylon tarps have regular tie-outs that I always manage to make work without extras. I do have a couple plastic tarp clip things that allow me to hook a guy-line to the edge of my cheap poly tarps between the sparse or poorly placed grommets. I've never tried them on my sil tarps. I might place a button tie-out for a center pullout on a cheap poly tarp without one.
I'm not lost. I'm exploring.
Thanks, nsherry. I ordered some xenon from Dutch and want to try a no sew solo tarp. I have used rocks before for button tie outs but you don't anyways find nice, smooth rocks and I worry about tearing a thin fabric.
You can walk in another person's shoes, but only with your feet
Pics of what this thread is about?
Wrap up an object in a corner of the tarp and then tie a loop of line around the object, trapping it in the tarp. It makes a secure connection point using the tarp itsrlf.
https://youtu.be/IFbyyQ3C_zY
This YouTube clip shows how to do it with a plastic bottle top.
You can walk in another person's shoes, but only with your feet
Sewing is such a wonderful skill and tool for working with fabrics. If you have a sewing machine and know how to use it, it is also generally easier and faster than the alternatives, along with producing a much more satisfying final product. You can learn to sew in an afternoon and you can buy used sewing machines pretty cheaply. I even found a new one at Ikea a couple years ago for $45 that worked surprisingly well for a lot of sewing until I think I killed it (it may just be time to lube it) sewing bicycle inner tubes which should really only be done with special needles and an industrial level machine.
I'm not lost. I'm exploring.
Sewing, baking, and carpentry all take too much attention to detail for me. I always skip steps and never the same step twice so my results are 1/4 @$$ at best.
You can walk in another person's shoes, but only with your feet
Setup the tarp today and its doing pretty well in a 15mph wind. I'm gonna have to continue to fiddle with it to get a tight pitch. Maybe cut a foot off the length. 9' is a bit overkill for a solo shelter.
You can walk in another person's shoes, but only with your feet
The tarp looks lovely.
As noted above, it's hard if not impossible to get a good tight pitch with button-type tie-outs because the material is not flat, it is significantly deformed around the connection point. Not a problem if it works for you in what you are doing with it. Less of a problem with nylon where the fabric has more stretch than something like polyester or especially polyethylene that stretch less.
I'm not lost. I'm exploring.