cuben fiber tarps -- pricing stable or likely to come down?

[Dogwood]

lol,... I don't know how somebody gets so worked up when the facts are so starkly obvious.

But as all the cool kids say (or so I've read) "Whatevs"

Thats what my sis says to my niece about cleaning her bedroom and that's what she says back.

[Coffee]

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nuff said

[cmoulder]

Cmoulder, Yaduck needs help. You're in a different place but in a place to help. Sounds like you know somethings he doesnt. Lead him through it...nicely. lol. Don't blame him for Osprey hitting on all "SUL" market selling cylinders although I q agree with you about the hard sell SUL BS.

Maybe he'd be more inclined to believe it if it came from you.

I mean, I've already poisoned the waters by insisting that 24 oz is lighter than 29.6oz, and that 29.6oz is not a SUL pack.
Now, I actually don't know precisely what NanoFly™ 210D Nylon X 200D UHMWPE is, but I'd bet a chunk o' change that it is very similar to what MLD calls Dyneema X and Zpacks calls Dyneema Gridstop. I think we all know what ripstop silnylon is. Well most of us, anyway.

As you know, these don't even faintly resemble DCF.

[Dogwood]

Convert from ozs to grams. Maybe Yaduck only knows metric.

RU kidding me? I'm still waiting for a state of the DCF market report. Miner took the best shot at it so far.

[cmoulder]

Convert from ozs to grams. Maybe Yaduck only knows metric.

RU kidding me? I'm still waiting for a state of the DCF market report. Miner took the best shot at it so far.

All I know is that 1oz = 28.35g

And Coffee's little meme pretty much describes my relationship with Cuben. I tried an inexpensive Xenon 1.1 silpoly tarp with the hammock setup but I just couldn't sleep knowing that a Cuben tarp would weigh half as much.

[Offshore]

BPL ain't doing it. They are far to interested in spending all their time supporting (read - making excuses for) their garbage forum software, charging people to post, and producing very little content in return. But for $97 dollars a year, you can post, sell stuff, and get access to skills webinars which they say they will make.

Or you can hang out at WB or r/ultralight and get all that for free.

And until very recently, if you registered on WB you could have your email address exposed and harvested. The upside of this sloppy site administration is that registered WB users got AT melodrama spam about stalkers, identity theft, and illicit love affairs among AT celebrities. All this - completely free of charge. BPL would probably charge extra for that.

[OCDave]

My real question is whether or not cuben fiber fabric is going to stay stable in price or might come down....

I'd suggest if you want a CF tarp made for you, buying now is as good a time to buy as any: Any drop in the cost of materials will certainly be offset by rising labor costs.

If you are looking to source CF to make your own tarp, the price of materials might come down eventually but, how long are you willing to wait?

It is difficult to justify the price of CF products. Much of what you get for the cost is the emotional benefit associated with the purchase rather than any significant difference weight or performance. Rather than trying to justify the cost, think of it as an unjustifiable luxury and treat yourself.

Good Luck

[Ethesis]

I'd suggest if you want a CF tarp made for you, buying now is as good a time to buy as any: Any drop in the cost of materials will certainly be offset by rising labor costs.

If you are looking to source CF to make your own tarp, the price of materials might come down eventually but, how long are you willing to wait?

It is difficult to justify the price of CF products. Much of what you get for the cost is the emotional benefit associated with the purchase rather than any significant difference weight or performance. Rather than trying to justify the cost, think of it as an unjustifiable luxury and treat yourself.

Good Luck

Well said. Well said.

[Coffee]

I think that cuben fiber, in certain applications, definitely provides value and can make sense. In my opinion, using cuben for shelters is a superior choice not only due to weight but because the sagging effect when wet that many shelters of other materials suffer from isn't a problem with cuben. Not having to get out of my tent on a wet night to retension guy lines is very nice. The only times I've had to get out to redo guy lines was due to snow load on the shelter which isn't even designed to hold significant snow but did a good job anyway.

Also durability is very good as a shelter. I've had my hexamid twin for five years and I've lost track of the nights spent in it but it has to be well over 150-175. It's shown some age and wear at the spot where the trekking pole supports it but is still fully functional. Material seems paper thing but is strong and durable. Amortized over so many nights, I don't mind having spent the $525 or so for the shelter back in 2013 and I'll replace it with another cuben shelter again when I have to, but it'll have to be something other than the twin which is no longer offered.

[Bronk]

In the short term it will probably stay around the same price. Long term it might come down. There is a lot of research going on with DCF — ballistics applications to protect against IEDs, Dyneema carbon fiber materials for race cars, new variants for aviation/space applications. The more uses found for DCF the more is made the lower the price. Supply and demand.

Geek aside, if you want a DCF tarp and can afford it buy it. Or wait for the off season holiday discounts. Some of those are pretty good deals.


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And look at the end users of these kinds of products and who will be paying for them. That should tell you right there that the prices won't come down. These are high end buyers who don't much care if they are getting a bargain. Prices will come down when Walmart starts selling cheap knockoffs of the name brand products and millions of them are being produced. I'd bet 95% of all hikers and backpackers don't even know what cuben fiber is.

[Coffee]

Geek aside, if you want a DCF tarp and can afford it buy it. Or wait for the off season holiday discounts. Some of those are pretty good deals.

zPacks was offering $100 off orders of $1,000 or more last year which is about as good of a discount as we'll ever see, I think. I'm hoping my Hexamid lasts me through November. If they repeat this Black Friday promotion, I will swallow hard and order a new tent and some other things I've been looking at for a very long time.

[Hatchet_1697]

It’s a personal call. Backpacking is my hobby, and for me, DCF is worth it. My DCF tarp/backpack will last years, doesn’t sag or hold water when wet, is easy to repair, and most importantly my knees like the weight of them. I wish I had saved up and went straight for DCF, but like a lot of folks I went the route of buying silnylon then upgrading. Now that has become my guest gear.

You could make your own, if you have the skills, it’s a lot cheaper.

https://ripstopbytheroll.com/search?q=dcf

https://www.yamamountaingear.com/diy/

Hummingbird Hammocks (great products btw) follows the “open source” model which I really respect them for. They make all their designs available. Here’s is the tarps link.

https://github.com/HummingbirdHammocks/rain-tarps

Good luck.












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[Just Bill]

Maybe he'd be more inclined to believe it if it came from you.

I mean, I've already poisoned the waters by insisting that 24 oz is lighter than 29.6oz, and that 29.6oz is not a SUL pack.
Now, I actually don't know precisely what NanoFly™ 210D Nylon X 200D UHMWPE is, but I'd bet a chunk o' change that it is very similar to what MLD calls Dyneema X and Zpacks calls Dyneema Gridstop. I think we all know what ripstop silnylon is. Well most of us, anyway.

As you know, these don't even faintly resemble DCF.

Yar... these are simply 'off label' or house brand versions of those fabrics used by Osprey. Exact same stuff- dyneema fiber for the ripstop grid over a heavy nylon weave.

I don't think Zpacks has anything to fear from Osprey at the moment. Though Gossamer Gear, ULA and a few others may find some losses from the newest Osprey Levity series... Osprey is already the most popular pack by far... improving the offerings on the sub-2lb end will only help that edge. People like easy and in person. Going to a store and picking up a pack off the shelf is still popular.



If anything... fabrics like Membrane Sil-poly pushing .93 oz finished weights and others pushing .7 oz are getting competitive for shelters.

If concerned on price... back to the latest woven fabrics.
If competing with tarps... there are some high end UL fabrics popping up.
If competing for packs... Dyneema X stop and flavors of it are long strong in the market, and X-pac (dimension polyant) is rising. Pack makers, including Z-packs seem to be pushing composite fabrics.

So in theory Cuben fiber has competition- but not direct competition.
The regular supply issues and problems with it scare off bigger boys. Ultimate direction used it, then dropped it.
Unlike other fabrics... you can't just slot it into a production order and sew it up. You have to have the workforce for it.

DCF... why would it go anywhere or come down? The company who used to produce it was bought by the company that makes some of the raw material... but the market is established and the manufacturing process is not easy.
Unless something really dramatic happened it's not really getting any faster to make. I doubt there is enough marketshare or volume to make the investment to come up with some kind of assembly line or mill.

Even if it was half the cost, it doesn't make a lot of sense to use it for a big boy... which is what the payoff would have to be for DCF's parent company to try to up production.
Given the costs of Amsteel and other Dyneema rope I can't imagine it's the dyneema thread that was the issue for Cuben Tech or even a critical component of pricing. So it's not like suddenly it all crashes down because one level of markup was cut on the thread used.



I don't use Cuben personally... it never quite made sense to me. I made some stuff sacks and test pieces but that was the extent of my tinkering.
As mentioned... when you seem to need .8 or 1.0 there were other options for me.
Wholesale price is around $25/yard... Probably better for somebody like Zpacks. For the most part he can build a tarp cheaper than I could buy one and make it myself. And I couldn't compete with Joe commercially in any shape or sense so I gave up on Cuben a long time ago in my designs.
I actually just ordered a zpacks tarp to try for my customers as it's not worth even playing with it IMO at this point. But CF does make sense for hammock tarps and a .51 can be an advantage for a SUL rig.


All pure speculation, Joe Valesko probably knows the most.
Which leads right back to him... if you want cuben... I'd just buy it from him.
He has to be the biggest buyer by far and seems to enjoy stable pricing and steady supply. Even when everyone was blacked out of the market for supply issues he still had material.

[cmoulder]

I love that 'inside baseball'!

I'm just some beer-swilling schlub in the bleachers.

[Just Bill]

I love that 'inside baseball'!

I'm just some beer-swilling schlub in the bleachers.

LOL, teaching me a new term.

I was mainly jumping in to back you up. Yer fellow bleacher bum seemed to have drank a few too many.

Dyneema X, Dyneema gridstop... whatever you want to call it has been the standard pack fabric for a decade or more. Barely in the same sport and for sure not in the same ballpark as Cuben Fiber.

Whatever marketing genius came up with Dyneema Composite Fiber is likely to blame though...
Besides getting it mixed up with other brand name fabrics they already had out... it seems the second the press release was issued everyone just abbreviated to DCF or continued to use Cuben Fiber as the OP did.
So not much benefit for anyone in shoving the DYNEEMA name.

Hell, doesn't take inside knowledge either to assume that a monopoly rarely if ever equates to price drops.
Especially when you have a big marketing campaign to rename your weirdly named product to an even weirder name.

[Just Bill]

http://www.dsm.com/products/dyneema/...equipment.html

Zpacks and Yama make the list of sporting goods partners.

[Dogwood]

That's why the gate was left open Cmoulder. Hoping the Rottweiler would show up.

[Dogwood]

I could see DCF prices rise possibly substantially for outdoor products if the US gets into another major ground conflict, martial law is enacted, etc. particularly a rekindling of middle eastern conflagration. Dyneema competes with kevlar, for a range of military apps. Supply side demand and production abilities would be prioritized for military, paramilitary, and LE use.

[cmoulder]

Heck, just ground those Americas Cup catamarans and we'd be all set.

Fortunately I'm flush with enough DCF gear for the foreseeable future.

[Violent Green]

The price isn't going down anytime soon. The demand for dyneema is huge and the supply is tight. Can't make cuben without dyneema.