Hi!
"Argh, Greg I've put a hole in my Singletrack Jacket!"
I'm pretty sure that these are almost the exact words that my friend Danny shouted at me one evening at the Lightweight Adventure Festival a while back.
It's a rubbish feeling when you realise you've damaged your favourite waterproof gear.
Our fabric choice is purposeful, finding the balance between abrasion protection, water resistance and light weight, but at the end of the day everything has its limit.
Like a barbed wire fence, either on the trail or at a motorcycle festival.
The good news is, a tear like Danny's might be emotional, but its actually a fairly easy job to repair.
Jim our Product Manager has years of experience keeping outdoors gear going for longer, here's his quick step-by-step guide to fixing that hole in Danny's Singletrack Jacket.
Stage One - a temporary repair on the trail.
Dig into your toolkit, past your zip ties, and find that duct tape you always carry with you. Tear off a section and slap it over the tear. It's not pretty, but it should stop the tear from getting any larger while you are on your ride, and will offer some water resistance till you get home.
If your jacket is super muddy, turn it inside out and stick the tape on the inside.
Bonus points if you have some proper fabric repair tape like Tenacious Tape with you in that toolkit. It's specifically designed to adhere to waterproof materials.
Stage Two - a permanent repair at home.
1: Wash the jacket.
Take a look at Jim's waterproof wash guide here.
2: Use masking tape to temporarily seal the tear hole on the outside.
Most tape is fine apart from parcel tape which leaves a residue that's a pain to remove.
3: Turn the jacket inside out.
Be careful not to dislodge the tape on the outside.
4: Liberally apply Stormsure glue to the tear hole from the inside of the jacket.
We swear by Stormsure glue, it's great for these repairs. Buy the smaller tubes as they go off once opened.
5: Let the glue dry for 24hrs.
Think ahead - perform your repair somewhere that you can leave it to dry (not the kitchen table!).
6: Turn the jacket back the right way round.
The heart of the repair is now done - once the glue is dry your hole should be pretty well sealed.
7: Remove the temporary masking tape and then carefully mask off the area around the tear from the outside of the jacket.
This is to make the outside of the tear look neat and tidy.
8: Carefully apply Stormsure glue to the tear, just going over the edge of the masked area.
The neater you can be with the Stormsure glue, the better the repair will look.
9: Let the glue dry for 24hrs.
Yes that's up to 2 full days to do this properly.
10: Remove the tape and GO RIDE!
And you are back in business!
OK there you go Danny, all is not lost.
Keeping our gear in use for longer, on the bike, on the trails and in the hills is just the right thing to do.
And if you have a bit of battle damage that you are not sure about, feel free to drop us a message so we can take a look. It helps us understand how our gear is performing out in the wild, and Jim and our customer services team are more than happy to advise on how you might be able to keep it going for longer.
🙂
Greg Villalobos
PS - We made a film about how to repair your gear. It will be on our YouTube soon.
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