Splitboard.com Forums

A hungry tree bit a good size tear in my gortex shell the other day and I was wondering if anyone has successfully repaired this sort of damage? The rip is at hip level under the arm so contact with heavy precipitation will be minimal. My initial thoughts on this is to duct tape the inside of the damage and use my therma-rest repair swatch on the exterior. Any better ideas out there?

There are a couple of local outdoor shops that I have seen which carry goretex repair kits. Duct tape would work to close it but that area would no longer have pores available to breath. If that is not that important to you I would recommend any type of fabric patch. Your thremarest kit, a wader repair kit or even an iron on patch (lowest heat through a moist towel to prevent scorching the surrounding goretex material) would protect the tear from further injury.

if you tape on one side and seamgrip the other it's supposed to repair tears, but i've never tried that.

When I tore my goretex pants I bought adhesive, waterproof risptop patches and used them on both sides. This worked well. Just one tip: round off all the corners, just like you would with moleskin or something like that, otherwise they'd probably start peeling very quickly. This won't breathe though, so hopefully it's just the seam.

http://www.gore-tex.com/remote/Satellit ... nformation

Gore-tex makes a repair kit just for this occasion. Looks like the retailers should carry them or know where to get them.

Ditto the ripstop nylon adhesive patch suggestion. The official Gore-tex patch kits are overpriced. For the area you're talking about, it probably doesn't need to be Gore-tex anyway so you should be fine with the ripstop. As far as the Thermarest patch - are you talking about just an adhesive fabric patch (which is probably fine), or the kit that includes the special glue that you heat up and apply to the patch? That glue dries pretty hard and inflexible, so I wouldn't recommend it on a jacket.

Duct tape would probably work fine too, and it makes you look so core.