Genuine Draft was out partying with the girls last night and it left me with time to think; ahhhhhhhhhhhh. It's been a while, so I had to knock the dust off with something I've been thinking about lately concerning tarps; particularly the small ones.
First of all, I've tried real hard to not have any issues using a ridgeline with my tarps. I've used them before, but not for long because I just didn't like it. I don't usually carry enough stuff to justify the clothesline aspect of them and I think tying each end separately is just as easy for me. The exception would be very high wind conditions and the ridgeline there, is somewhat useful. I've got a couple of tarps, including the dreaded stock HH napkins, that just won't pitch tight without a ridgeline supplement. These tarps don't have a seam along the ridge, so you really can't ever get the ridge 'snappy' just tying both ends to trees. The result has been that these are the tarps that spend the most time in the closet instead of outside where they belong.
So a few days ago, I'm talking to OES Brian about a Micro MacCat in Spinn and he tells me he can do them, but they will have a ridge seam due to the limited width of the Spinn rolls. My first thought was: "Yeah, and?" I prefer a tarp with a ridge seam simply because they set so nice and crisp. Obviously, this wasn't a negative to me. I actually felt like he was doing me a favor by adding the seam.
So my question is, what reasons are there to not just fold the fabric where the ridge would be and put in a false seam? Seems to me that this would allow these types of tarps to be set tight along the ridge, without adding more than a few grams of thread weight and reducing the coverage by an inch on either side. Both of those 'drawbacks' are perfectly acceptable to me if it means I can use those tarps without a separate ridgeline and still have a clean pitch. Am I, in my ignorance, overlooking a major flaw. Would the false seam not be strong enough to hold the tension strain?
Anybody have a reason I shouldn't try this with one of my old stock HH tarps? I'm going out again today in search of a new thread injector and I'm thinking this may be my first experiment when I get back to sewing again. Save me some time if you can think of a reason I shouldn't.
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