how to revive your silnylon poncho or tarp for $5 and 30 minutes

M

mtwarden

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Sep 27, 2009
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I purchased a Vietnam era silnylon poncho- took me quite awhile to find one of the lightweight silnylon ones vs the heavier rubberized ones (little factoid- in 1968 the lightweight version replaced the rubber one as it was deemed too heavy and too shiny)

when I got it, it was covered w/ a lot of white power for storage, wiped this off w/ a damp cloth to discover that a lot of the sealant around the hood area was peeling- which considering this piece is ~ 40 years probably not unusual

I thought about sending it back, but then I found this article on treating silnylon

http://jwbasecamp.com/Articles/Silnylon1/index.html

and although it talks about treating tent floors, it would apply to any silnylon product

I went to Walmart and spent $5 on a tube of clear silicone sealant and a small bottle of low odor mineral spirits and a couple of cheap foam brushes

as per the instructions I mixed the silicone to mineral spirits 1 part to 3 parts, takes 3-5 minutes of mixing to get it sufficiently diluted, then apply

make sure you have adequate ventilation :)

I let it cure overnight and then turned it inside out and treated the inside- for the inside I used a more diluted solution- 1:6, this is probably closer to what you'd want to revive a modern silnylon tarp/poncho (I've even read up to 1:10)

recoatingponcho.jpg


in case you think this only applies to 40 year old pieces of kit, there have been several articles recently about the degradation of the hydrostatic head of silnylon

http://www.backpacker.com/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=832107219;t=9991147454

fortunately the "fix" is cheap and easy :D
 
Interesting and good to know. Despite being in the Army in the mid-70s, I would neither see nor have issued the lightweight until after '80.
 
jw2n said:
Interesting and good to know. Despite being in the Army in the mid-70s, I would neither see nor have issued the lightweight until after '80.
Click to expand...

having been in the military, I guess that doesn't come as a total surprise :(
 
I did not realize that they had been around since '68. I have slept under a poncho hootch more than any other shelter and that is what led me to recently buy a Cooke Custom tarp.
 
Thanks a million, mt. I have a US Army Surplus camo poncho and it has the same problem of peeling around the hood. A couple of years ago, I posed the question on here about reapplying the waterproofing but didn't get any workable solutions (no pun intended).

I'm assuming it's the kind your referring to, because it's not heavy enough to be rubber and you can see the little squares in the fabric, as in rip-stop nylon.

Doc
 
mtwarden- Are you sure your poncho is sylnylon, and not coated with polyurethane instead. Sylnylon shouldn't peel. Polyurethane coating eventually do. Polyurethane coatings on tarps and ponchos used to be standard. Sylnylon is a fairly new invention, and I'm pretty certain it couldn't be Vietnam era. :confused:
 
DOC-CANADA said:
Thanks a million, mt. I have a US Army Surplus camo poncho and it has the same problem of peeling around the hood. A couple of years ago, I posed the question on here about reapplying the waterproofing but didn't get any workable solutions (no pun intended).

I'm assuming it's the kind your referring to, because it's not heavy enough to be rubber and you can see the little squares in the fabric, as in rip-stop nylon.

Doc
Click to expand...

Doc- yup that's it- you can see the ripstop grids, weight should be just a little over a pound, the rubberized ones were twice that

the peeling around the hood doesn't disappear, but you can be confident it will be waterproof

Scott Free said:
mtwarden- Are you sure your poncho is sylnylon, and not coated with polyurethane instead. Sylnylon shouldn't peel. Polyurethane coating eventually do. Polyurethane coatings on tarps and ponchos used to be standard. Sylnylon is a fairly new invention, and I'm pretty certain it couldn't be Vietnam era. :confused:
Click to expand...

yup- positive, silnylon isn't that new :) here's a good discussion on the "heavy" and lightweight Vietnam era ponchos- it also has the FSN numbers so you know for certain which one you have

the peeling is urethane- they added urethane around the hood area to help insure it didn't leak- the rest is plain old silnylon

and I was wrong it wasn't 1968, it was 1966 :D

http://www.vietnamgear.com/kit.aspx?kit=198
 
my reading comprehension obviously isn't up to par :)- your correct, ripston nylon w/ urethane, not silicone

I'll see how well the silicone takes, it appears to have soaked into the nylon

fortunately the title of my thread and remedy stands for true silnylon (we'll see how the treatment does on vietnam era ponchos) :D

thanks for pointing that out!
 
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