PE - RE: Grommet failure

[Barclay, Peter C. MAJ]

My wife and I had a dayshade that eventually experienced some grommet
failure, meaning the grommets started pulling out of the fabric...

The primary problem seemed to be "not enough thickness of fabric" for the
grommet to really hold.  We solved the problem by stitching in a triangular
piece of leather everywhere there was a grommet.  We had white leather for
our white canvas, but you could certainly sandwich the leather between
layers of canvas.  We stitched it down with a double row of stitching around
the outside, and then a double row up the center.  (Yes, we know we punched
a hole in the center line of stitching when we set the grommets)

We also punched the holes a *little* small and then "struggled" to get the
grommet in.  The fabric was easy, the leather a little harder.  We found
this resulted in the fabric and leather being VERY tight up inside the
grommet, and more for the grommet to grab.  The grommet also prevented the
center lines of stitching  (we cut with the hole) from coming undone or
wanting to pull out. 

We have since used the dayshade at about 20 events a year, and not had any
grommets pull out in the last 4 years (since we fixed them all).  

respectfully, 

                     Terafan

Master Terafan Greydragon           barclayp at eucom.mil
Brewer and probably other things I can't think of...
Seneschal, Incipient Shire of Blauwasser


-----Original Message-----
From: Wendy Freeman/Otte [mailto:wyllow at netscape.net]
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2000 8:17 PM
To: tentguild at ansteorra.org
Subject: PE - Re: [TENT - Need help hanging my walls]


Better late than never!

A learning experience:
I NEVER wanted to experience another grommet failure again (image a 10 x 20
x
14 high tent, with 3 poles weighing 60lbs each  and 20 side poles coming
down
because 5 grommets failed at the same time...)  So I planned a tent with no
grommet holes and only 2 lightweight poles.  King Rene's tent, again.

I used a thick rope around the edge of my tent, going through spaced loops
of
cloth, and made a case for a rope on the tops of each of my walls & doors. 
Then it occurred to me that this would not allow any way for me to hook the
walls to the roof - so I seamripped a bunch of slots in the wall cases, so
loops of ropes could be pulled out.  I planned to loop the wall ropes around
the roop rope.  

It took 4 hours to get it up since I had to feed the ropes through all of
these casings, plus my slits did not match my roof spaces, causing bunching
&
overlap. But it was nice & weatherproof.  Sigh...

So I cut pieces of rope the correct size for the wall & door pieces, preset
the loops, and used a THIRD rope to hook them together.  
Better - only two hours to hook the walls to the roof.  But the wind made
the
walls shift, and the slits and casings still don't match.  However, the wind
puts very little stress on my tent - it stood up to the annual Lilies War
windstorm with barely a shrug.

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