Help me avoid this fabric...

[Dublinlin]

My guess would be DEET, too. Could there have been deet on the hammock at some point before it was pulled back up into the sleeves? I melted the control dial on my favorite headlamp with just a bit of my bug spray's overspray last summer. Gooed up the dial instantly and within a few days it'd gone from gooey to welded down permanently leaving it impossible to switch on. Ruined it! And it didn't even receive a direct hit of bug spray...just some over spray from being nearby when the spray was being sprayed.

[Snaps]

Interesting... I don't think so, given how uniform the decay is, if you can call it that. The tarp, the hammock, everywhere else is in great shape. It's only these components with this weird black coating that is, well, icky. That, and, I haven't used DEET on it.

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[Fishbite]

It may be DEET. If someone sprays OFF upwind it could easily cover your hammock. And usually if one person starts spraying, others borrow the bottle. It has some sort of plasticizer that softens plastic. I found out the reason my depth finders on my boat get foggy and get ruined over time is because of OFF, that I used to use all the time for night fishing. Now I almost panic when I see a bottle of OFF in my boat.

[Snaps]

I don't want to be dismissive, but the only spots where this issue has occurred are the inside of the stuff sack, the inside of the hammock end caps (which don't see the light of day unless the zip ties are clipped and they're totally removed), and the inside of the hem of the mesh storage bag. The tarp, the hammock, the ridgeline, bugnet, and the snake skins are all great. The original suspension lines had a little tackiness from the stuff sack, but I've removed those.

I just don't know how DEET would be that selective.


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[hutzelbein]

I don't think it's DEET. Not if the problem is on the inside of the pocket and the end caps. Hennessy unfortunately uses a lot of PU coated fabrics, and I have had PU coating peel away as well as sort of melt. Not on my Hennessy (yet), but on backpacks, duffle bags, organizer bags, stuff sacks and so on. That's why I try to avoid PU coated fabrics at almost any cost. Usually the coating can be pulled off, or washed off. You could put the end caps in the washing machine and see if they come out clean. If they do, you can put them back on.

[Otter1]

I should add to my earlier post that this has happened (in my climate-controlled home) to tent flys twice. Some PU coated fabrics are just prone to it. You did nothing wrong.

Use sil-coated fabric if you want to replace the sections.

[Snaps]

Thank you both. This sounds to be the likely culprit. I'll give the washing a try. The most bothersome part is trying to thread zip ties through the end cap channels... they fight me the entire time, and the black coating comes off in little wads. I would have some replacements made up, but I probably won't have them off again anytime soon.

The mesh ridgeline bag is in the trash, and hopefully HH has mailed me a new stuff sack. I'll watch for polyurethane coatings in the future.


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[DrPhun]

Try rubbing alcohol. I had a pair of binoculars that had grips where this happened to. They got sticky. I was able to clean the sticky pArt off with alcohol and a rag. It wasn't deet. I have had stuff melted with deet, but that melts and then rehardens.