What Is Your Tent or Rain Jacket Made From? (2025): Dyneema, Silpoly, X-Pac via NewsFlicks

Spend any time in any respect researching outside equipment, whether or not it is a new tent or a brand new rain jacket, and you’ll be able to temporarily to find your self awash in a complicated array of jargon. Silnylon, polyurethane, X-Pac, cuben fiber, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE)—what are these items?

What none of them are is easiest. Every has its personal weight, value, advantages, and disadvantages. However there is a material that is easiest for you and your specific use case. We put this information in combination that will help you strip away the promoting and higher perceive what every cloth does, what it is best used for, and the place it struggles.

Out of doors Material Varieties

Let’s get started via breaking this down into the quite a lot of fibers and fabrics utilized in outside equipment. We’re going to skip one of the most older issues, like waxed canvas, since the general public are acquainted with it. Listed below are probably the most repeatedly used materials within the outside trade these days.

Silnylon

The oldest of the bunch, this time period refers to silicone-coated ripstop nylon. This flexible cloth is broadly utilized in tents, some (nonbreathable) rain equipment, stuff sacks, and lots of different items of drugs. Its strengths are sturdiness, excessive tear energy, and waterproofing. The disadvantage to nylon is that it absorbs water—even, sadly, when lined with silicone. Therefore the DWR therapies, however even with the ones, one day nylon will rainy out and get started soaking up water. This is the reason your tent’s rainfly sags when it will get soaked. Nylon could also be sluggish to dry.

Polyester

That is some other very flexible, broadly used cloth with one large merit over nylon: It does not soak up just about as a lot water. This implies it does not sag as a lot. That is in particular essential in ultralight backpacking tents that pitch with trekking poles. Sag is not only tense, it is a lack of structural integrity and will cave in your tent. The disadvantage to polyester is that it is not as sturdy as silnylon in lots of instances (it particularly has a tendency to rip), and perhaps no longer as sturdy over the longer term. That mentioned, I in my view to find this problem to be overstated. I’ve two tents with polyester rain flies that experience lend a hand up properly over the process just about twenty years of use.

{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson

Nemo Osmo

What if it’s worthwhile to mix the most efficient qualities of nylon (sturdy, sturdy) with the most efficient qualities of polyester (hydrophobic, much less stretching)? That is the query that led Nemo Apparatus to broaden its Osmo cloth, a proprietary mix of nylon and polyester. I have been trying out Nemo’s Osmo line of tents since they debuted in 2022 and feature discovered that Osmo does certainly organize to sag much less that directly nylon rainflies.

X-Pac

It is a laminated cloth that begins with a nylon face, lays in a polyester grid, then a PET plastic layer to offer waterproofing, and in spite of everything, a nylon backing to offer protection to the extra fragile internal layers. The merit over ripstop nylon is the water-resistant layer, which is best typically than even silnylon. X-Pac is available in quite a lot of weights, however the commonest in packs (which is the place I have discovered X-Pac actually excels) are VX21 and VX42. Those thicker, heavier, variations of X-Pac are extra abrasion-resistant and nonetheless stay about 20 % lighter than silnylon in a an identical denier. The disadvantage for X-Pac is that it may be somewhat fragile, particularly when it come to abrasion.

Dyneema Composite Material

Within the outside trade, Dyneema is probably the most known logo identify of a composite subject matter manufactured from woven ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE). UHMWPE is a broadly utilized in many industries for lots of issues (together with bulletproof vests), however the model that displays up in tents and packs is, like Dyneema, fibers which have been spun in combination after which layered into a material. Therefore, the identify Dyneema Composite Material (DCF).

The ensuing cloth is 15 instances more potent than metal consistent with weight. That cloth is then sandwiched between outer layers (normally polyester) in order that a water-resistant coating may also be carried out (it may not stick with the DCF immediately).

Dyneema is extremely sturdy, like off-the-charts sturdy in comparison to nylon and polyester. It is usually very mild and water-resistant, all of that have made it a favourite amongst ultralight hikers and backpackers taking a look to shave off the oz. Dyneema’s weak point is abrasion. I’ve noticed the nook of a Dyneema rainfly overwhelmed to shreds via wind in one evening of flapping in opposition to sandstone. It is simple to fix, but in addition very pricey relative to nylon and polyester, and it does not pack down as small. Alternatively, correctly used and cared for, Dyneema is surely the most powerful, lightest cloth on this record, making it superb for packs, stuff sacks, and tents.

Ecopak/Extremely

Ecopack is some other cloth that involves ultralight mountaineering from the sector of boating, the place it used to be at the start used for, properly, sails. That is some other UHMWPE face cloth, laminated to a water-resistant lining. You’ll be able to see this cloth beneath logo names like EPL Extremely, Extremely 100, Extremely 200, and Ecopak Extremely, amongst others. The numbers normally correspond to the denier, so Extremely 200 makes use of a 210 denier face cloth. However that cloth could also be woven UHMWPE fibers (about 70 % for Extremely 200), making it a lot more abrasion resistant than Dyneema Composite.

Courtesy of Dyneema

Dyneema Woven Composite

Dyneema not too long ago offered a brand new cloth, Dyneema Woven Composite (DWC), which marries a completely woven Dyneema face cloth to DCF. At the moment, most effective Hyperlite Mountain Equipment packs use this new cloth, however we think to look others undertake it going ahead because it improves Dyneema’s abrasion resistance. It is going to be fascinating to check DWC to Extremely since DWC is largely DSM’s resolution to Extremely. We’re going to replace this information when we have now extra time to check DWC packs.

Different Material Elements

If you happen to have a look at the above and judged only on what I laid out, you would most probably via an enormous fan of Dyneema and Extremely, particularly if you are into ultralight backpacking and you might be aiming for base equipment weight (earlier than meals and water) of lower than 10 kilos. Sadly, different elements inside of every cloth additionally have an effect on how properly it plays, so it is onerous to make apples to apples comparisons.

For example, there’s a large distinction between ripstop nylons used around the trade. Clutch a cheapo nylon tent off Amazon and evaluate it to a Hilleberg tent and you’ll be able to temporarily understand that, excluding each being manufactured from the similar base subject matter (nylon) they have got not anything in commonplace. That is the place elements like thread rely, calendaring, denier, weave sort, and extra come into play.

What Is Denier?

Denier is most probably the strangest unit of dimension you’ll be able to ever come upon. Denier is the load in grams for 9 km of thread. So 9km of Hilleberg’s Kerlon 1800 weighs 40 grams. What does that inform you? Just about not anything, however it is a helpful technique to evaluate materials and know, for example, that Hilleberg’s Purple label tents, which most effective use 30D ripstop nylon aren’t as sturdy because the fashions made with 40D.

The explanation Hilleberg tents are so properly made, and final for many years, is that the customized nylon mix and weave the corporate makes use of are higher than what you’ll be able to to find on different “nylon” tents. Hilleberg’s nylon, which the corporate calls Kerlon, is 40D excessive tenacity ripstop nylon, which is made for high-strength expedition tents.

Denier turns out to be useful to make comparisons throughout producers as properly, so you’ll be able to know that your cheapo Amazon tent with its 8D nylon may not final just about so long as a 30D type from extra respected manufacturers. On the identical time, denier isn’t the top of the tale both. There also are various ranges of coatings. Needless to say nylon absorbs water, so you need to observe a coating to sluggish that procedure down.

What Is Hydrostatic Head?

Any other unit of dimension that you may see is hydrostatic head, which is an trade same old unit of dimension used to decide the waterproofness of a material. Technically talking, it’s the top in millimeters of a column of water {that a} cloth can face up to earlier than liquid starts to transport during the weave. Hilleberg’s Kerlon materials additionally coat each side with a 3-layer software of one hundred pc silicon, which provides the nylon an HH score of 5500mm and make the material a lot more potent.

Weaves and Coatings

To exhibit differently by which these kinds of score and measurements aren’t the top of the tale, we’re going to believe yet one more tent maker, Durston, which not too long ago dropped the denier of its polyester cloth X-mid tents from 20D to 15D. That appears like Durston made a weaker tent, however in keeping with the corporate, the brand new high-strength 15D polyester provides “96 % of the energy of the 20D whilst being lighter.” The corporate merely modified the weave and the coating.

The coatings also are other. Not like Hilleberg, Durston makes use of a silicone coating at the out of doors of its rainfly and a polyether coating at the within. The hydrostatic head for the X-mid is 3500, which is lots to stay you dry. Having spent wet nights in each the brand new Durston X-mid and a Hilleberg Akto, I will guarantee you that, whilst every corporate has taken a unique trail to the completed product, each tents are sturdy, well-made, and water-resistant. The result’s identical—you keep dry.

A Phrase on Dyneema

Dyneema and different UHMWPE materials like Extremely are without a doubt probably the most thrilling materials in outside equipment presently. They conquer two primary downsides of nylon and polyester: they are lighter and they do not soak up water. A lot of the rush into outside equipment manufactured from Dyneema has come from ultralight backpackers seeking to cut back their pack weight.

As famous above, Dyneema’s energy is its resistance to ripping, which makes it an ideal choice for tents, packs, and on a regular basis pieces like stuff sacks. Whilst many higher manufacturers have now embraced Dyneema, it used to be actually the small, cottage trade manufacturers that experience pushed innovation.