Make your own Micro-Tarp

When I started looking into the whole bivy idea and it seemed like something I would rather like the first thing that struck me was a Tarp although in no way required or essential was a good idea.

Having a Tarp would allow me to eat, sleep, change and sit out of the wind and rain (hopefully). I looked at various Tarp’s and read a number of trip reports in which people had pitched a tarp or tried to… It quickly became apparent that for the areas I would be erecting my Tarp I really didn’t want a 3x3m kite. What I really wanted was something small and discrete that the wind would hopefully just roll over.

After lots of searching through various sites and cottage industry type manufacturers , which just seemed to expensive – except the BPL one that has been out of stock for ages.  I decided that the plan from here was perfect for my needs. I envisaged it being perfect for a summit camp in the Mournes protecting me from the elements.

I ordered my material fromPoint North which consisted of a 3m length of Silnylon and 2m of 15mm webbing.

On receipt of the material I began to wonder how I was going to sew it. This Silnylon was amazingly slippy stuff and I had not used a sewing machine for 20 years.

My first inspiration of the day was to use a soldering iron to cut the materials. I figured that it would kill to birds with one stone:

• The Silnylon would hopefully not fray as the ‘cut’ would seal and so I could simply double it over and sew it leaving the cut edge exposed (see below) saving me trying to do a proper hem type thing (I have no idea what it’s called).

• ‘Cutting’ the webbing with the soldering iron removed the need to seal it with a flame.

I marked out my nylon with chalk and set to work with the soldering iron set to its highest temperature 482 deg C and a small tip.

I used 2 overlapping steel straight edges to hold the material in place and ran the iron down the edge to make the cuts. I then used the soldering iron to cut the webbing into short lengths and cut reenforcement patches for each pegging/guy point.

Ready to sew I had to reconvene to my parents to use their sewing machine. Que my Dad sewing like a demon and cursing like one too for the next couple of hours!! I’ve now been informed that a ‘walking foot’ will make it easier to work with (thanks Lud) as its so slippy it just slid from under the foot.

Complete I put it on the scales and its coming out at 187g it also fits in the bag that my Rab storm bivy came in with the dyneema and line locks.

All this 15m of dyneema, bit of paracord, Tarp, bivy and bag come in at 750g I weighted the cheapo pegs I used to peg it out and they are coming in at 100g. So 850g with cheapo pegs .

I think I could easily fit the pegs in the Rab Storm bag also.

I tried a couple of positions for the pole as you can see below:

Setup 1

Setup 2

Setup 3

It is a wee bit low for me to sit upright properly but my material’s width was 10cm less than the plans so I think this would make the difference.

I think that setup 1 & 3 would shed wind the best but setup 2 seems to provide more room. With setup 3 I changed the point that the pole supports to a more central one and this allowed me to attach the original to the mid-point of the pole enclosing me a bit more, it doesn’t look much but when inside it looks like it would provide a large amount of protection.

I was originally going to tie the guy lines on but I bought some Alpkit clippers and I’m going to give them a whirl as I thought about the guys always hanging down getting in the way if I wasnt using them. Now I can clip them on as I need them.