Make Mine of Miracle Fuzz

Make Mine of Miracle Fuzz

Choosing by the material it's made from.

– Hmmm. –

Whatcha gonna do?

You need one pack, and there on the wall at the shop hang a dozen or more packs. From makers such as Arthur-T-Rex, Blech Diamond, Dieter, DogSpray, Granted Gear, Gregorian, GooLite, Indoor Research, JaniceSport, Kilty, Marmite, Mountain Hardtimes, MountainSchmidt, SoHairy Designs, The NorthByNorthwest Face. All the big brands. And more.

And you want a pack, a special, comfy one, preferably one of these fine great brands, and made of hand-woven fur meticulously collected by brushing purring kitties as they nurse.

Gonna find it?

Heh.

– Arrr! Canvas, matey! Quack! –

Canvas is another fabric you won't find in modern backpacks. Too bad in a way. When people say canvas they're still usually talking about cotton. Actually, cotton duck, since canvas is really a weave and not a material. Canvas basically comes in two versions: twill and duck.

Twill is a fabric with a diagonal wale. A wale is a slight ridge, almost like a raised line in the surface of the fabric. You've seen this in your blue jeans, which are denim. Denim is a kind of twill.

Duck is more likely what you've seen in any pack made from cotton canvas, if you've seen one, or in a truck tarp, or a heavy jacket. This is what you know as canvas. Duck is like twill but it's plain and smooth — no ridges. It's a sturdy, untwilled fabric, once used in sails and the clothing of sailors. You can still get some work clothing and retro fashion items made of this stuff.

Cotton canvas has all the benefits and drawbacks of any natural fabric.

• The resource is renewable because cotton grows fresh every year.
• The characteristics of cotton fabric vary by its weave and by what treatments it gets.
• Cotton is mostly waterproof, if waxed and woven the right way.
• Cotton is quiet and calm. Not crinkly, not swishy, not scratchy, not shiny.
• And cotton feels warmer and more friendly to the touch than synthetic fabrics.

But cotton perversely molds and rots if left to its own devices. You probably don't see this as an advantage. On the other hand though, discarded synthetic fabrics will still be around long after your great grandchildren have passed their 140th birthdays. Because they don't mold or rot. (Speaking of the fabrics, not your great grandchildren, but by then, who knows?)

If you find a pack made of canvas it will be small and cute and fashionable and not likely of any use for backpacking at all. Cotton packs are more a statement than anything. They look retro. They are retro and look cool. Steampunky, hipsterish, with heavy brass buckles and leather straps and pockets that have loose-fitting lids. They are heavy. You won't find a "real" backpack made of cotton. Too bad in a way.

– Slippery shiny versatile ubiquitous Nylon. –

So, welcome to the modern world. We live here now.

While petroleum lasts.

Even though invented way back in 1935, Nylon is still the premium material for making packs. That says something about this compound's versatility. Don't forget though that underlying Nylon is a whole industry. Even if something 100 times better than Nylon was invented this afternoon, and anyone could set up a factory in two days, Nylon would continue to be the premium material because it is a known item. People know how to make it and use it. It works. There is a whole long supply chain from raw chemicals all the way through the industrial plants that process them, and into the textile mills, on to the factories that furiously sew up thousands of different items, to the local shop where you buy these finished products, and then to you, who take the products home and throw them into a closet.

There is inertia in that.

Nylon's qualities are completely understood. It isn't perfect but perfect goes only so far. Perfect isn't a thing or a place, it's a judgment. Everything has good aspects and bad ones, and knowing what the balance point is and how to deal with a material's strengths and weaknesses is as important as what the material is.

There is a continent of chemical plants refining the raw materials that go into Nylon. There are even more plants, each making one of Nylon's particular varieties from those raw materials. There are uncountable factories all over the world weaving different Nylon fabrics, and designers and producers taking those different fabrics in hand and making real products that sell, and an ocean of customers like us expecting to buy products whose characteristics we know.

That industry will be around for a while.

So, Sucka, you basically have very little choice in what your pack is made of. Expect it to be some kind of Nylon. If you expect that, you'll probably be happier when it is served to you.

What exactly it is that you actually get may be a Nylon canvas, a ripstop, some kind of oxford cloth, or a heavier type like ballistics cloth or Cordura or something similar to Cordura but called Kodra. (Go figure.) Most packs made by most manufacturers and available in most stores will be made of a type of Nylon canvas. This will be heavy, tough, and durable. It will work and it will last and you will like it, if you even notice. Mostly you won't notice.

Instead of expecting to choose a pack by what it's made of, expect to choose a pack by what it can do for you, and accept the material as one of its features.

Size, shape, weight, fit and feel, number of straps and tie-downs and pockets and internal dividers are important. You have to take the fabric that comes along for the ride. But in most cases expect Nylon.

– But I really want to feel special, so please help me. –

There are more specialized fabrics than Nylon, but since Nylon will not be going away, unless you make your own pack or have it custom made for you, you don't get a choice of fabrics. But other fabrics have shown up and they are used for specific reasons in making specific packs to meet specific needs.

Spectra is a type of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene which is made into fibers from which Spectra fabric is then woven. You've heard of Kevlar. Well, Spectra is like that but better in some ways — 40 per cent stronger than Kevlar, more cut resistant, and lighter, while also being eight to 10 times stronger than steel.

If you don't like Spectra, then look for Dyneema, which is basically the same thing but made by someone else, so that way you get your choice of names.

Both Spectra and Dyneema are good in packs, especially so since they aren't used in big, thick mats of woven Spectra, or as Dyneema cables. Instead, what you get is a pack made of Nylon fabric interwoven with a ripstop pattern of strong Spectra or Dyneema threads that reinforce the Nylon. You get a light fabric that is still immensely strong. This is equally true when the reinforcing threads are Kevlar.

Don't expect a pack to be made bullet proof, even if the fabric it is made from is used in bullet proof vests. You don't need that and you don't want it. It would be too heavy, too stiff, too expensive, and therefore generally useless, so forget it, right now. Unless you want people to shoot at you. In that case, it might be a good idea.

Super high-tech fibers like the above are supporting cast members only, while Nylon remains the star. If a pack gets extra strength from judicious reinforcement by extra tough materials, that's pretty good for us backpackers.

– Sailing the trendy seas. –

Going lighter than that, and even more modern along the evolutionary trail of pack materials, we get into narrow specialties.

Once again, you won't go shopping for packs, choose one you like, and then choose the fabric that it's made of. But you can choose your weight range and preferred material and then look for packs made in that weight and from that material. And hope you find something, anything.

Spinnaker cloth is like that. Was like that. Not used any more, as far as I know.

Spinnaker cloth went into the lightest practical packs (until DCF fabrics came around, but all this depends on what you mean by practical). At under an ounce per square yard (a few grams per square meter) this is light stuff. The packs made from it are small and simple. They do not stand abuse. After a season or two a spinnaker cloth pack or even a DCF pack might need to be thrown out, or trusted thereafter only for day hikes.

Spinnaker is thin fabric and vulnerable to abrasion. Packs made from spinnaker cloth are hard to repair on the trail. They are also hard to care for, since they can't be thrown around or sat on or dragged through thickets of thorns with impunity.

Spinnaker cloth isn't strong enough to make large packs. By definition a large pack will carry more weight because it has more volume and you can get more stuff into a larger volume. Bigger pack, more internal volume, which holds more stuff, which weighs more, and so on. Spinnaker cloth works in small packs because small packs carry less, and because fewer stresses build up across short pieces of fabric.

Spinnaker cloth does have two great advantages though.

• First, it's light, and strong for its weight.
• Second, it's available.

You need both. Real companies make packs from spinnaker cloth, or at least a couple companies used to, and you can or could buy one of those packs. What is more likely is that you will make your own (if you can find the cloth), and you don't need a hazmat suit to work with this material. The actual fiber used to weave spinnaker cloth could be polyester, but it might just as well be familiar old Nylon again. These are both pretty ordinary by today's standards, as you know by now.

– Alien science, cubed. –

Cuben Fiber (or Dyneema Composite Fabric or just DCF as it's now known) is the latest and greatest. Or not. Remember that, all around, nothing beats Nylon, and it is a fabric. But moving closer toward the galactic rim, we shift from what anyone would call fabric toward something that comes in sheets and can be used in ways that fabric is used, but without really being fabric. If a fabric is something that is fabricated, then anything goes, but we're being realistic. Fabrics are woven and Cuben/Dyneema is not.

Cuben/Dyneema Composite Fabric is two sheets of Mylar film (clear plastic) sandwiching a layer of fibers between them. The sandwiched fibers can be woven into a loose mat or kind of thrown in, helter skelter, like toothpicks. The layers of Mylar film provide waterproofing and windproofing and hold it all together, and the fibers provide strength. The fibers are either high density polyethylene (like Spectra/Dyneema) or they are Kevlar.

Only a few short years ago no one sold backpacks made of Cuben Fiber, but some are available now, and you can make your own as well.

Cuben/Dyneema Composite is tough, almost impossible to tear, and it is puncture resistant. But it is relatively easy to abrade. Since a pack will rub on your back, and probably other things too, Cuben/Dyneema Composite isn't the best choice for packs, or for clothing. You can find commercially made tarps and shelters of Cuben/Dyneema, and packs too, but if you want the absolutely lightest pack possible you'll have to buy Cuben/Dyneema Composite Fiber and make your own. And expect to be on your own with that — no warranties, no returns, no complaint department, no repairs available While-U-Wait, added on top of a learning curve, because even if you already sew, you'll have to start all over with the Cuben stuff.

– Summary judgment. –

So what have we learned then? Not much here either.

You can't really pick a pack based on what it's made of. You pick a pack for what it is, and the fabric comes along the same way your inlaws did, if you married, and sometimes even if you didn't.

None of this is really a surprise. You might pick your clothes based on material but you probably don't. Or your car, or much else. Wool pants are a choice but don't get your heart set on having a wool car, or a wool bath tub. Not rational. Or available.

Standing first in line among all dimensions is functionality. Does the thing do what I need it to do?

If you find one available pack that fits the bill, then check around and see if there are more choices. If so, then you have options. Generally speaking though, all choices will cluster into a group based on the same set of materials. The materials will be Nylon, or, well, Nylon.

You find something that suits you and automatically you know that it is made from something appropriate for the task. Those two have to go together, by definition.

Getting way down into the lightest end of the pack spectrum you find that though the fabric may be stronger than steel on a weight-for-weight basis, once you get super dooper light, the total strength is less, and you have to accept that.

The fabric isn't the issue. The fabric is not the story.

There are two issues, and there are only two:

• Size.
• Weight.

If you want a two-ounce pack big enough to feed you for three to five days then right now you have only one fabric choice, and you have to design and make that pack yourself. With extreme care. And use it the same way.

And you can if you want to, but Do you?