Winter tarp with no ridge seam; idea.

[CamoDeafie82]

I drew out an idea for a winter tarp using two different width of sil material, that has NO RIDGE LINE SEAM.... taking the idea from my two-tone OGEE tarps and expanding them....

Basically 3 panel design; using standard 58-59" material for the middle panel, then get the XL 65-66" wide Sil fabric, cut it in half lengthwise... then you have a tarp that could be right on 10 feet wide, with a seam half-way up the middle, to which you could bar-tack panel pull outs for the pole mod, and using 5 yards each, you could have a RL of 11 ft or 12 ft, and the bottom edge would be 8 feet long... with the remainder of the space being taken up by the doors.
I very much dislike having a ridge seam myself...even though two of my tarps have that (10x10 and the still uncoated camo hex tarp), and I just prefer to put pull outs on the seams where possible, like on my two OGEE tarps.
You could make it even bigger by going for 65-66" width fabric all the way through, but it would be simpler to make it a normal ridge seam tarp (2-panel) and have over 10 feet width, no side seams.

I've never really needed the extra reinforcement patches on my OGEE tarps for their tie outs except only the ridge line tie outs, all the other tie out loops are on seams.

[zukiguy]

So what's the problem with a ridgeline seam? It seems like this would make the whole system quite a bit stronger since you have basically 4 thicknesses of fabric bundled together at that point. This is like making rope....each fiber kind of weak but together very strong. Isn't this basically the same reason you like having seams where you're planning to add tieouts (no need to reinforce the area)?

[CamoDeafie82]

So what's the problem with a ridgeline seam? It seems like this would make the whole system quite a bit stronger since you have basically 4 thicknesses of fabric bundled together at that point. This is like making rope....each fiber kind of weak but together very strong. Isn't this basically the same reason you like having seams where you're planning to add tieouts (no need to reinforce the area)?

Main thing; I can never keep the two pieces of fabric straight enough together for the ridge line. (the Hex tarp is a wonderful example of that first attempt)
Also, I feel that it makes the nylon tarps more likely to have wrinkles and uneven tension from tie out to tie out on the RL, especially with straight cuts (haven't really done cat cuts yet, but thats one idea I'm thinking for this winter tarp with the XL Silnylon). Because of the extra material in the ridge line seam, theres a difference with tension... but with a seamless ridge line area, I can put the tension high enough, and the fabric doesnt have any floppiness in the main panel, or the edges especially with my OGEE tarps. (they're straight cuts and theres no floppiness, but thats more because of the triangle cuts and the edge hems helping a lot)

Also; its slightly cheaper way to get into the larger tarps with the XL fabric. Instead of needing 10 yards of the XL, I only need 5 yards of the XL plus 5 yards of the Standard width; And I can get the same color for the two fabrics to keep it looking uniform, unless I go for a two-tone design which would be pretty interesting.