Bushwalk Australia

I was wondering what others in the forum do for glue for canvas/cordura pack repair (or for alternative approaches to repair).

I do a lot of canyoning and rock scrambling, so the bottoms of my packs get very wet, and heavily worn by scraping over rocks.

I've used a variety of glue with cordura patches (offcuts from Summit Gear, that makes most of my packs). Of late I've been using Selleys Shoe Fix. It's fairly cheap ($6), quick, low mess and seems to result in a pretty sturdy and waterproof bond.

Anyone else have good recommendations?

Almost as much patch as the average pair of my walking pants.

Aquaseal. It's a good bit pricier but you get the added bonus of the toluene high.

Gear Aid makes good products for this sort of thing, including a few variations of Aquaseal. It's got the advantage of remaining flexible after curing, so it moves with the fabric of a pack. It also has good abrasion resistance, so you can even coat the high wear parts of your packs when new to make them last longer.

https://www.canyongear.com.au/product/aquaseal-fd/

I do have some Gear Aid Aquaseal, but for the patching I've been doing recently, I've gone through around 100g of glue. That's about $90 worth of Gear Aid, and $13 worth of Shoe Fix.

The Shoe Fix is also flexible, so it's currently winning the price/performance equation.

You might be at the point where the environmental cost of replacing the pack is less than the environmental cost of all the chemicals in the adhesives.

ribuck wrote:You might be at the point where the environmental cost of replacing the pack is less than the environmental cost of all the chemicals in the adhesives.

But he's only just gotten it worn in!

ribuck wrote:You might be at the point where the environmental cost of replacing the pack is less than the environmental cost of all the chemicals in the adhesives.

Yes, an interesting question! I don't know the answer.

The pack is a mix of Cordura (probably mainly nylon) and canvas. The main components of the glue are acetone, ethyl acetate and n-Butyl acetate - these are all found in foods on a regular basis, so I'd say of low toxicity.

Nylon is slow to break down in the environment, but the packaging for the glue (plastic & cardboard) may be a close second...!

See if you can get your hands on some Challenge ULTRA 800 fabric and patch the whole base.