Two new fabrics in the shop

These two new fabrics have been added to the shop to replace the older 40D “ultralight” fabrics, and will be used in the long-awaited update to the Ultralight DIY Packraft kits. They are currently only available in yellow (TPU one side) and black (TPU both sides). I’m quite pleased with these fabrics, and I think you will be too!

I’m trying to move away from describing TPU coated nylon fabrics in terms of denier (D) because I think weight-per-unit-area, such as grams per square meter (GSM) or ounces per square yard (oz) gives a better indication of a fabric’s relative strength and packability, because denier doesn’t tell you anything about thread count or the thickness of the TPU coating, and ripstop fabrics may incorporate threads of more than one denier.

For comparison, the 40D “ultralight” fabrics are about 100 GSM (3 oz). The standard DIY Packraft 210D tube fabrics are about 250 GSM (7.4 oz). The 420D fabric is about 560 GSM (16.6 oz), and the 1000D fabric is about 735 GSM (21.7 oz). The new lightweight ripstops are 115 GSM (3.4 oz) for TPU one side, and 190 GSM (5.6 oz) for TPU both sides.

I’ll try to post a new video comparing the failure strengths of the various fabrics sometime soon.

More info in the DIY Packraft Shop:

• Yellow, TPU one side
• Black, TPU both sides