repair kit

Another of the "ten essentials" that I do not carry is a repair kit. I'm not exactly worried about my thick spectra pack ripping. Most of my really important gear is pretty bomb proof and for the rest, if I keep it in good shape it should not fail and if it did, it would give me a chance to improvise. So no duck tape - yuck, if you use duck tape on nylon fabric you'll wish you hadn't. I'd rather rip a down jacket and lose feathers that can be replaced than put adhesive on an expensive jacket. I suppose a needle and thread might help,
BUT
today I had to hand sew a piece of gear. The buckle broke (slammed in car door) on my crazy creek chair and had to be replaced, and one of the rigid stays had torn through so I stitched it down, all with boot makers thread. Besides repairing an air mattress, which is pretty much impossible while camping, I haven't "repaired" any camping gear nor had any camping gear in need of repair for a very long time, like over ten years.

I used to carry eye glasses repair stuff when I had $200 titanium frames that kept falling apart. I went to Wal Mart and bought a pair of glasses with poly carbonate lenses and plastic frames that envelope the lenses, for $68.

I do carry a Gerber LST knife. It weighs around 1.5 oz but has a really nice wide blade maybe 2.5 inches long. I guess thats my repair kit. Oh and I often carry a tiny pair of those "tick tweezers" - lot of tool there for not much weight.
Jim

Have you sharpened that knife yet, Jim? Or is it still as dull as always?

BF

P.S.
When's the next trip? I'm free until Tuesday afternoon.

It's not a field repair but there are bonding tapes made for nylon fabrics. I think Stitch Witch is the name of one. Place it between two pieces of nylon fabric, add heat (iron with paper to protect nylon fabric) and it fuses the two pieces of nylon fabric together. It's sort of like welding nylon. I've used it on a couple of tears and it worked great.

I have repaired things, but my repair kit pretty much consists of
some duct tape on my trekking poles, a needle in my first aid supplies and some nylon line or dental floss, and a couple of safety pins.

I've sewn buttons on with dental floss, and sewn up ripped pants on occasion.

For the most part I'm kinda like Jim, I'm used to my gear, and there's not a lot can go wrong with it that wouldn't either fix the small oops, or improvise around.

I *do* also carry a thermarest patch kit when I take a thermarest, (I do when I am on the ground as opposed to in a hammock) and I *have* patched a thermarest in the field successfully - it wasn't mine, although I had the kit

My first aid kit doubles as a "repair" kit. No much of my stuff can break unless I'm bringing radio/electronic gear out and even that has never let me down. Superglue, dental floss, a big needle and hotel sewing kit, razor blade, some tape, and that's about it. I'm trying to remember the last time I fixed something other than myself.

Jim,

You are right, but I have never been able to leave it at home. So far this year I have not opened either the first aid or the repair kit. Next spring I will go through both kits to make sure everything is OK.

Both kits are less than 8 oz. I just can NOT break through the mental barrier and leave them at home.

ringtail

Maybe breaking through that barrier is what allowed me to be pretty darn light without relyinjg on UL gear. I simply leave out a lot that others just can't leave home without. My important gear is bombproof and needs no repairs, and I don't need unimportant gear. In 40 years of backpacking the only first aid that I've done on my self was to remove a tick. I've used my blue hydrogel and gause and tape on others. Now my first aid kit consists of a few meds and 2 bandaids, a very tiny bottle of saline eye drops (because if you get something in your eye out there its just nice to be able to clean it out). Tiny tick tweezers act as a lightweight pair of pliers.
Jim

I have field-repaired some items during my backpacks, but not often.

The needle that I (only rarely) use to lance blisters, combined with some thread wrapped around a small piece of cardboard and a thimble to protect my fingertip, has been used several times to sew up rips in fabric. It could also sew up a wound (thank goodness, never used for that purpose, yet).

I carry about three feet of duct tape wrapped around a pencil stub, but I've used the pencil more often than the duct tape.

I carry a few safety pins, too. They mostly come in handy to pin damp socks to my pack for drying as I hike. They were once put to emergency use when my tent zipper failed on me in a buggy area.

I used to carry a spare clevis pin, back in the day when all the pack bags were attached to extenal frames. I also used to carry a spare waist belt buckle, but have developed my instincts to protect the buckle to such a high pitch that I don't feel the need for a spare.

I've toyed with the idea of bringing a tiny tube of super glue, but I can't seem to justify it from past eperience, so I preserve it as a vague thought only.

Bring it! I bet I've glued myself over 100 times in past years. I play guitar professionally and use it to repair splits and cuts often. In fact, I've got some on my thumb from where I was chasing out some threads on a mic stand and poked myself, Saturday night. Superglue is very common in music circles.
Backpacking, I've used it to repair cactus spine punctures...in me, and in platypus bags. It repairs cloth rips and just about anything else. It's amazingly cheap and a great lightweight fix.

Sure enough, most all my bluegrasser friends put a drop on their fingertips when they get raw after playing for hours and hours (Those guys don't know when to go to bed!

Me too, but the one time I actually broke one, I wound up repairing it with a length of shoelace instead. 7 years later, that shoelace is still holding.

I always carry the thermarest patch kit now. It's not that heavy and can be used for all sorts of applications. Haven't used it to patch a mattress yet but it worked great to hold my wife's boots together when the soles were coming off. I think my middle name should have been jury rig...