make your own sil.

[WalksIn2Trees]

Not that crazy. The ones i used to use were 4'wx5'lx3'h.. unless you can find one from a huge book printer, but mostly I'm only mentioning that for the process involved. You could as easily find squeegee rollers at a commercial printing supply place, fill an old bath tub with the solution, soak the fabric for an hour or two and run it through the rollers with a hair dryer blowing on it on the recieving end.

[amayumi]

dear sirs.
what if i make the mixture thin enough to be applyed with an air pistol?
i mean, i want to just paint my tent, in order to improve its water resistence.
would it be a good way to go?

i tough about to soak my tent in the solvent first, to improve the silicon absorb.
does it will do any good?

[T- Minus]

why not stretch out the material and use a pro airless paint sprayer outside, the sprayer will atomize the mix and not leave any lint or heavy spots from roller pressure or excess pooling of material. The heat will dry it smoother.

[Zentoast]

dear sirs.
what if i make the mixture thin enough to be applyed with an air pistol?
i mean, i want to just paint my tent, in order to improve its water resistence.
would it be a good way to go?

i tough about to soak my tent in the solvent first, to improve the silicon absorb.
does it will do any good?

Soaking would take a TON of material to mix. Would be uneven application as well. Sure, I think you could spray it, but don't go too heavy, as it will run. And you better make sure you clean the crap out of your lines IMMEDIATELY with thinner or kiss them goodbye. Once that silicone drys, that's the end if it.

Again, foam brush. Cheap, easy. No nonsense. Take it from someone who has been using this mixture and application method for years now. If it aint broke, don't fix it. Good luck!

Good luck!

[amayumi]

my plan was to fully set up my tent at my backyard, then hang it 1 meter above the ground, so i can turn it and work below it.

then apply a very thin silicon+spirit mixture, thin enough to work with the air pistol without problems.

my goal is to fully waterproof the floor and the cover external layer, not painting the internal layer, to avoid condesation problems.

this way, i think could pick up a solo cheaper tent, that is the cheaper and lighter option in my country, and work it to do a little better during rains.

there is no quality tarps where I live.
just poly ones.

absolutely no good hammocks, just too cheap crap ones.
all quality tents and tarps come from usa and cost a arm and a eye.

and since there is too much bugs (tropical forest), we prefer to use hammocks or tents instead of bivys or sleeping bags alone.

any hint will be appreciated.

if it work in my tent, i think i could do a tarp too and abandon my poly (heavy!)

atb

[amayumi]

any hints?

if possible, i would like to know how much can i dilute the silicon in order to make the mixture thin enough to be air pressed against the nylon.

i mean, the topic talks about 3 parts of spirit per 1 part silicon.

what should i get if i made 9 parts spirit to 1 part silicon?

this way i think i can paint the tent with the pistol close to the nylon, forcing the mixture against it.

and since its thin, the excess will just fell, dripping to the ground.

at least in my mind.. lol

thanks

[trbjr]

So, 500 posts later, can someone give the best mixing ratio and application process. And what is the durability with the coating.

[scaleman]

I would try spray silicone mold release comes in spray can come out clear and drys on contact . think i can get you a brand name if you wan't.

[Twokag]

Soaking would take a TON of material to mix. Would be uneven application as well. Sure, I think you could spray it, but don't go too heavy, as it will run. And you better make sure you clean the crap out of your lines IMMEDIATELY with thinner or kiss them goodbye. Once that silicone drys, that's the end if it.

Again, foam brush. Cheap, easy. No nonsense. Take it from someone who has been using this mixture and application method for years now. If it aint broke, don't fix it. Good luck!

Good luck!

From your experience is brushing it on good enough, or do you have to scrub it in?
I assume you do this with the tarp pitched tight?
Is doing one side enough, or is a second coat on the underside needed?

Thanks

[xxl_hanger]

I just made made my 12' hex tarp + Grizz beaks waterproof? I used:

310ml silicon transparent made by Pattex (Henkel) (http://www.lidl.de/de/pattex-silikon-transparent-310-ml/p191146). I got it cheap from Lidl for 1.49€

tauro white spirit odourless (= tauro Terpentinersatz geruchlos) (http://www.boesner.com/farben/malhilfsmittel/fuer-farben/terpentinersatz-geruchslos). I bought 2 liter from Boesner (professional art supply) and used exactly

302 grams silicon + 3 x 302 = 906 grams tauro white spirit. (One liter white spirit is about 758 grams.) I mixed it with a drill, a long octagonal plastic curtain stick and three zipties in a 5 liter Saint Amand PET waterbottle. The mixing worked clean and well although I noted a lot of little air bubbles in the silicon sauce. Next time I would use the drill perhaps a little slower. The waterbottle was a good idea. I could close the bottle after mixing.

After about 30 minutes or so I filled the sauce in a bigger plastic container (a former letter container of the Deutsche Bundespost). And with my protective nitril gloves (European norm EN 374) I put the tarp in the mixture and knead it from all sides. Same with the Grizz beaks. The silicon material was just enough and the ripstop nylon I used was very absorbent.

The tarp hangs now in a big and cool cellar room. There it can hang 48 hours or even longer. It looks like that it will come out very nice. (Note: After the tarp hang I used a brush to make sure that I will get no single silicon snotnose on the tarp surface). I'm already sure it will be completely odourless. Hopefully it is waterproof too.

[xxl_hanger]

After about 80 hours the surface still felt a bit sticky (no further improvement during the last hours). Therefore I hang it outside. I think there it must completely dry within a few hours even in the shadow. I made already a water test. As far as I can see it is 100% waterproof. No need to repeat the treatment. The character of the fabric changed completely. The fabric is evenly much darker (a nice brown-olive) and water drips off fast. Before the treatment the ripstop nylon soak up any wetness and got promptly spotty (This was the reason why I did not want to use this fabric for my hammock project). Tomorrow I will put it on the scale. Before the treatment the 12' hex tarp was 10.4 oz.

[xxl_hanger]

The silicon sauce I used was 42.6 oz (1208 grams) heavy. I used this material completely for a 12' hex tarp + Grizz beaks. After the treatment I noted the following weights and alterations:


before after
treatment treatment change
oz oz oz %

12' hex tarp 10.4 16.2 5.8 55.7
Grizz beaks 7.5 8.7 1.2 16.0
total 17.9 24.9 7.0 39.1


This looks a bit strange. But the explanation for this is that the material was already a bit short for the Grizz beaks. 7/42.6 ~= 16.5% means that the sauce volatilized by ~83.5% during the drying process.

[xxl_hanger]

I have shown the finished tarp after silnylon treatment here (https://www.hammockforums.net/forum/showthread.php/110011-First-%28newly-designed%29-Hammock-%28Steinadler-1%29-ready?p=1488730&viewfull=1#post1488730).

The tarp is 100% waterproof and I can use it. But I consider this experiment as no success. The silicon coating is imo too soft and very sensitive. And I still have the impression that the tarp is not really dry and the surface feels a bit sticky.

I would in no case repeat this experiment. I would prefer Silpoly PU4000 2nd Gen. In a similar situation than I was (I had the ripstop nylon fabric left over and didn't want to use it for another purpose) I would try it with some water resoluble acrylic mediums which artist use. There are some acrylic binder on the market which are highly elastic and very durable.

[dscotthep]

Just finished my first DIY tarp and wanted to share some of my successes, failures and thoughts on DIY Sil.

My son needed a tarp for his hammock when he heads off on his Boy Scout high adventure trip in a few weeks, and found some polyester fabric in a camo print he liked so we bought 7 yards and proceeded to sew up a simple rectangular tarp (123"RL x 116"W). Following the recommendations in this thread (I read all 513 posts!), I bought a couple of 3 oz. tubes of silicone and some odorless mineral spirits from StuffMart with the intention of using one tube per half of the tarp.

We pitched the tarp in the backyard and I mixed up the sil in an old pickle jar using my drill with a length of wire coat hanger bent into a crude mixing paddle.

Lesson #1: A length of coat hanger will not stay centered with the rotational axis of the drill but will flail wildly about once it gets up to speed. :scared:
I now have a waterproof pair of shoes and socks (and legs and 4' dia. patch of patio).
Solution: Drill a hole in the pickle jar cap to pass the coat hanger through, and have someone hold the jar while you mix.

My second batch of sil was ready to go after about 3 minutes of mixing and my son and I started painting it on the tarp with 2" foam brushes.

Lesson #2: This is a terribly slow and tedious method for applying sil. We were doing this outside on a cloudy Saturday morning and I found it nearly impossible to see where I had applied the sil. This was (I think) partly due to the lighting conditions we were dealing with and partly due to the fact that the fabric gave no visual indications that the sil had been applied here or there.
Solution: Not sure. After a few minutes of this, what I *wanted* to do was lay the tarp out on a table and pour on the sil and spread with a sponge (like you would do when applying wallpaper paste to wallpaper).

My son and I painted for about 15-20 minutes before we felt we had covered the first half of the tarp. We used all the sil I had mixed up and both of us were pretty sure coverage was questionable at best. By the time I was able to run back to the store to pick up another tube of silicone, it was late afternoon and about 10° warmer in full sunshine. I mixed up a third batch of sil and applied it myself to the other half of the tarp. I had better lighting now but still had trouble seeing where I had applied it. And I was wearing latex gloves.

Lesson #3: In the morning my son and I wore nitrile gloves. In the afternoon I grabbed a pair of latex gloves by mistake. Latex falls apart in mineral spirits and silicone and I had to stop and pick pieces of latex glove off the tarp as I was brushing on the sil.
Solution: Stick with nitrile gloves.

We gave the tarp 48 hours to cure. I was surprised by how thin the coating felt on the fabric, I expected it to be heavier. I could also feel that the coating was uneven. We blasted it with the garden hose to see how waterproof it was. As expected, not so much. The tarp half my son and I did together appeared to be about 85-90% waterproof with water misting through in only a few random spots. The half of the tarp I coated myself in the afternoon was a disaster! It had maybe 50% coverage with water misting through everywhere.

I didn't want to give up on this tarp (especially after all the work that had gone into it), so I bought more silicone and mineral spirits, more nitrile gloves and a large sponge (StuffMart was out of wallpaper sponges that day, so I picked up the largest Ocelo kitchen sponge I could find).

We pitched the tarp inside out (to coat the inside surface this time), mixed up a double batch of sil and got to work. My son held the fabric taut so that I could pour on the sil and spread it around with the sponge. We sponged the entire tarp in about the same time we spent brushing just half the tarp the week before.

Lesson #4: Skip the brush and use a sponge. If you can do this on a large table or clean floor, even better! Also, the kitchen sponge worked great, although a larger size would have been nice (mine was about 4"x6").

We still had a difficult time seeing the line between sil/no sil. My son acted as my spotter while he held the tarp and we both paid closer attention to make sure we didn't leave any areas uncoated.

After another 48 hours to cure we blasted it with the hose again. This time: Success! We could detect no misting or leakage with a heavy spray from about 3 feet away. The coating is thicker now, obviously, but still thinner than I ever expected. It doesn't have a tacky/sticky feel like others have experienced but it IS very grippy. I could use a scrap in the kitchen to get those stubborn jar lids off. :lol:

This method of tarp making isn't for everyone. You need to plan ahead, be patient, have a good area to work in (outdoors is doable, but indoors on a table would be ideal) and think it through before you do dumb things (see lessons 1 & 3).

Cost wise, I spent about what I'd spend on a RBTR tarp kit. But only because I used so much more sil than I planned. The fabric, thread and grosgrain were about $20. Silicone, mineral spirits, brushes, gloves and a sponge came to about $36 (including the waste). So $56 for the whole project. The project should have cost only about $40.

Would I do it again? Yep! (started sewing one for myself last night) Because I like to make stuff. I like the satisfaction that comes from creating a piece of gear that you can't get by buying it. Mistakes and failures are part of the learning process so no effort is wasted. I learned this years ago building my own ham radio gear.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone make a better informed decision about their own DIY Sil project. Cheers! :shades:

[Markk116]

For anyone still looking for a more thorough tutorial, this guy's video is really great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_R0gEDZhAI