Pimp My Tent

My first really light (for the time it was bought) backpacking tent was made by (I think) Saunders. It is a tent that I still carry from time to time because it is relatively light at 1.6Kg and includes a decent porch area. It was rated as a 1+ tent. It would take two people but you wouldn't enjoy it. As a solo tent it's excellent - light, strong and a low profile.

saunders tent saunders tent 2

On a rainy day I sat down with the tent, a fabric catalog, a set of scales and a calculator. I tried to work out how to make the tent lighter by using more modern fabrics. I failed.

The inner tent was made of nylon that at 40gsm was as light as anything I could buy and as light as or lighter than mesh. Even organza weighs in at 30gsm.

I then looked at the flysheet. This was SilNylon. Again it's as light as any SilNylon I can buy. The only alternative would be to replace the entire flysheet with 0.6oz spinnaker cloth which with a weight of around 45gsm would create some weight saving but at a severe cost of strength.

Recently, I had a radical rethink and this is what I came up with.....

Component	Weight (g)	Alternative 1	Weight	Alternative 2	Weight
Inner Tent	486	Bathtub floor	140	Spinnaker sheet	75
Front and Rear Poles	90	Carbon Fibre	30	Collapsed Trekking Poles	0
Main Loop pole	155	Carbon Fibre	60	Cabon Fibre	60
18 pegs	216	Titanium pegs	108	Fewer Titanium Pegs	72
Peg Bag	8	40gsm R/S nylon	3	No bag	0
Tent pole bag	18	40gsm R/S nylon	6	No bag	0
Flysheet (Complete)	551	None	551	None	615
Guylines	22	Thinner nylon	15	Spectra	6
Rubber Peg Loops	42	Use existing Alu rings	0	Use existing Alu rings	0
Tent bag	22	40gsm R/S nylon	10	No bag	0
TOTAL	1610		923		828

These are the choices that I have made for this tent (since I don't tend to have trekking poles with me):

Component	Weight (g)	My Choice	Weight
Inner Tent	486	Bathtub floor	140
Front and Rear Poles	90	Front and Rear Poles	90
Main Loop pole	155	Main Loop pole	155
18 pegs	216	Titanium pegs	108
Peg Bag	8	Peg Bag	8
Tent pole bag	18	Tent pole bag	18
Flysheet (Complete)	551	None	551
Guylines	22	Guylines	22
Rubber Peg Loops	42	Rubber Peg Loops	42
Tent bag	22	Tent bag	22
TOTAL	1610		1156

So, just with a little bit of thought I have lost almost 500g from the weight of the tent without compromising it in any way.

This image shows the tent with a bathtub floor but no inner tent:

saunders tent 3

There is a lot more space...

The inner tent on this particular tent is actually quite restrictive in this tent and without it the tent is comfortably big enough for two people and headroom would increase from 60cm to 70cm!!!

I have some carbon fibre poles on order from Fibraplex for the tarp and if one of the pole sections will do the job I will consider using them. Even so, a 1200g tent is much more welcome in my pack than a 1600g tent.

If you were willing to spend the money and the time you could halve the weight of the tent which means that it would compare very well with modern tarptents (that often do not include the weight of poles and pegs and bags in their calculations).

Fibraplex can supply custom carbon fibre tent poles for a price. There may be other suppliers but Fibraplex was the one I could find. If you are crafty you could also buy carbon fibre tubing from a kite manufacturer. I tried to do this but it was expensive and the supplier was unresponsive...

When the Fibraplex poles did arrive I found that they were far too flexible for a tarp although they would probably be OK to replace flexi-poles in a tent. As a result I sent the poles back for a partial refund...