Bushwalk Australia

My mum is a seamstress so I enlisted her help to create a heap of compression bags, dry bags and drawstring bags.

She had never used Silnylon before and found it a pain in the *&%$#! to work with but Im super happy with the results



A few of the bags she made



A roll down compression bag



Zip up bag which Im using for first aid



A draw string bag for my cooking pot



A reversible dry bag which is lined on one side which doubles as a pillow


My next question is seam sealing. What do people use? I brought a tube from Aussie Disposals but when it dried it didn't stick to the silnylon and just peeled off.
I see the stuff on youtube of people in the US using Mineral Spirits and silicone. Is there an alternative product to Mineral Spirits in Aus?

Saintpaul wrote:My mum is a seamstress so I enlisted her help to create a heap of compression bags, dry bags and drawstring bags.

She had never used Silnylon before and found it a pain in the *&%$#! to work with but Im super happy with the results

Looks good. Does your mum have any tips for working with Silnylon ?

You can use Shellite but it is much more expensive than mineral turps

keithj wrote:

Saintpaul wrote:My mum is a seamstress so I enlisted her help to create a heap of compression bags, dry bags and drawstring bags.

She had never used Silnylon before and found it a pain in the *&%$#! to work with but Im super happy with the results

Looks good. Does your mum have any tips for working with Silnylon ?

My mum has a pretty fancy sewing machine and was able to take the tension on bobbin right off electronically. She doesnt recommend this if your machine cant do it electronically though

She found starting to sew a scrap piece of folded fabric at the start and then moving onto the silnylon handy so it gives you something to hang onto as it feeds through and to apply equal tension on the fabric from the front and the back
She used a #70 sewing needle with polyester thread, not cotton and 3mm Stitch length

For silnylon seam sealing :

https://www.wildearth.com.au/buy/gear-a ... r/MCN10003

Hi saintpaul,
Neat sewing on those bags. My mum was also a seamstress. She died recently at 98Y and I have a lot to thank her for all the unusual projects she helped us with while teaching us so much. She still made sewing look easy compared to my plodding.

Here is a little recent video tribute to her showing my woollen ski onesie that she made by knitting, crocheting and sewing way back when I was a pup. The onesie is still enjoying skiing with me on sunny days, but it cringes in my backpack when the weather is crook.



Back to silnylon glueing/sealing.

Clean MINERAL turpentine (not plant base product) works well as a thinner and is available everywhere.

I always use the ACETIC CURE RTV silicone rubber. The solvent is acetic acid. It might knock you over with the smell. However, it is a natural part of life on earth and is completely trustworthy, (even a tonic), compared with most other solvents that we chemist have created. Trust me I was one!

I have had success glueing silnylon to form strong bonds that suffice for sewing. The 41g- 700ml kettle in the photo below is an example, it has no stitches and the silnylon is bonded to itself and a copper foil bottom.



The trick is to get the right type of silnylon (that is affordable,..... trying not to say cheap!) that makes good strong load-bearing bonds. For me, it is a matter of luck. I would like to hear from anyone who has this sorted out.

I have posts on my website about silnylon glueing and another where I go through all sorts of materials where I test and report on their glueing potential for DIY backpacking gear. A mixture of success and failure as you may expect but it opens up so many great DIY or MYOG ideas including glue/sew bonding options.

https://timtinker.com/silnylon-glueing/
https://timtinker.com/silicone-rubber-for-ultralight-backpacking-gear2/

In amongst all this ramble, even medium-strength RTV silicone bonding can help spread the load when supplemented with stitching. It makes the machine or hand stitching surprisingly easy.

I think it takes away that shocking slipperiness of the silnylon and lets the sewing machine do its normal thing with the pull-through teeth. ( I can hear my Mum saying, "They are called the dogs, Tim.)

Lastly, even with the 'lesser silnylon' (crappy), the thorough seam sealing with diluted RTV silicone rubber can be very helpful. For example, with silnylon tent seams (and importantly the stitch fibres in the seams), they become so water repellant that they are as good as waterproof. Maybe not quite good enough for your dry bags if you plan on giving them a dunking on a river float walk!



I hope this helps, Tim