I'm in the "materials acquisition" phase of making an underquilt. My budget is pretty tight right now so I decided to bust into a mattress topper (bought from sportsmans guide 8-9 yrs ago) that I don't use anymore. The topper has a 4" thick feather-filled bottom part and a 2" thick down-filled top part. I wanted to see how good the down was so I ripped a seam in the top part. It seemed to be fairly feather free, so I decided to try it out on something quick(ish) and (relatively)easy. Last year I found a "too good to be true" $85 price on a 20 deg down mummy bag... well, it was. The down inside was sparse, it wasn't baffled and wouldn't keep ANYONE warm to 40 degrees, much less 20. Anyway, I ripped a small section of the seam for each sewn thru down compartment and added down from the topper using justjeff's vacuum cleaner method. (Thanks Jeff!) Because I don't have a small enough scale, I have no idea how much down I added. I filled the extender tube with down until it wouldn't suck up anymore, then blew it out into the sleeping bag. Smaller compartments got 1 load, bigger ones got 2-2 1/2 loads.
It looks like it'll work just fine, so my next job is to start cutting and sewing my underquilt using recycled down!!
Now a couple of questions for the great minds that are Hammock Forums...
I hope to have something that will get me to around 30 degrees F. Does 2-2.5" baffles with a little overstuff sound about right?
Do I NEED to weigh the down before adding it or can I just fill the compartments till they all have about the same loft? I'm guessing that it isn't all that important since I don't know the fill power of the down and have way more down than I'll need for this project.
Also, just out of curiousity, is there a reason for overstuff with shorter baffles instead of taller baffles without overstuff?
Thanks for all the information I've been gleaning from y'all over the last year or so!
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