Bushwalk Australia

If you were to make your own back pack and availability of fabrics was not an issue which fabrics would you choose?

I really like the fabric Golite use. The recycled stuff.

some reasonable denier nylon nailhead or dobby for the harder wearing areas specifically the base .. 200 denier?
cuben fibre for the low wear areas.

Strider wrote:I really like the fabric Golite use. The recycled stuff.

I thought they used Dyneema ripstop and now Robic - do you know what the recycled stuff is called?

Edit: Don't worry found it.

wayno wrote:some reasonable denier nylon nailhead or dobby for the harder wearing areas specifically the base .. 200 denier?
cuben fibre for the low wear areas.

Thanks Wayno I had to google nailhead and dobby never heard of those terms before.

i think dobby is the harder wearing of the two

Quite a few cottage pack makers seem to be using the Robic fabrics now, so they must offer some advantages over the dyneema x-gridstop fabrics. The Robic fabrics don't seem to be available from the usual DIY vendors yet but it would be great to be able to access them. I think they come in 100, 210 and 420 denier at least and these would be a great combination for packmaking. Personally I would value abrasion resistance over waterproofness so would prefer a quality PU coated fabric over the dimension polyant fabrics as they are heavy for the level of abrasion resistance (despite feeling tough because they are stiff).

I have emailed Hyosung to see what the deal is with the Robic, it's clearly the flavour of the month with a few pack makers. They also do a recycled fabric called Regen made from discarded nylon products such as fishing nets - I wonder if that's the same as the Go-lite fabric??

Great, let us know how you get on with them.

BTW here's a good blog on pack fabrics if you haven't seen it: http://bedrockandparadox.com/2014/01/26/pack-materials-rundown/

Thanks I have not seen that link, it suggests XPac certainly has its place. I have had contact with Dimension Polyant and they are sending me out some swatches of their XPac fabrics. So far they have been excellent to deal with.

Yep, they have their place. As always it just depends on what your priorities are.