Best Tarp (and material for tarp)

[CurSedVoyce]

So does slate.....

 

[woodworkingboy]

I think you guys are in the wrong forum.

 

[RopeArmour]

Maybe not a serious question, but it seems a legitimate one.

UV seems to rot out those vinyl tarps pretty quick, being weak to begin with. OK for temporary use. When they start to rot out they make a mess too, leave blue fibers all over the place...at least our species over here. The waxed canvas seem to hold up pretty well for sweeping debris into.

Yeah the tarp you are thinking of is weaved and plasticy/cheap The inexpensive stuff does fray and get ratty and isn't worth a ... .02cents
The pvc tarps i use are mesh nylon or poly and impregnated coated with rubbery stuff/pvc.
I have had these blue guys for 4 or 5 years and they where on a big rig for some time before that.

So this material is a totally different animal. Store them wet or dry doesn't seem to matter and sunlight isn't a huge issue either.

We see them on the road coast to coast, strapping down loads and protecting cargo. These can really take a lickin.

 

[Labour of Love]

If you are seriously interested in big rig tarps, contact a local hauler. They will have tarps that have been repaired and are not so much worth repairing over and over again. I get mine for $50.00 each and they are for 53' trucks. A bit of high quality contact cement, a few patches, and you'll have really HD tarps.

Also, this place is out of Denver, CO, and has amazing items to be repurposed at reasonable prices (though shipping can be a bitch if you're on the East Coast). http://www.repurposedmaterialsinc.com/

 

[Al Smith]

They have some tough ones called a roofers tear off tarp .They have webbing sewn into them and are made especially for lifting .A little pricey http://www.tarpsupply.com/construction-tarps1--roofers-tear-off-tarps.html

 

[pigwot]

Best tarp we've had to date is the 'awning' off of a cedar child's play structure we were hired to remove from a job site.
It seems to be about 20 to 24 oz/ sq yd and heavily vinyl coated to the degree we have no idea what the base material inside it might be!
It is holding up quite well, is a nice shade of blue, and the best part is they paid us to take it away

 

[bonner1040]

But you dont bomb wood onto it right?

 

[treesmith]

I had a job with a bunch of raking once, where the customer had just put up some new chain link fencing. His old gates were propped against the house, 8' long, by ~48" high, I guess. We laid the gate next to the pile and loaded up. One guy on each end could carry the whole shebang to the trailer and tip it off on top. It worked rather well. I haven't used a tarp much, as the few times I have resulted in tearing the tarp pretty quickly on pine cones and such.

 

[Al Smith]

Some of those old truckers type tarps were rubberized canvas .Heavy as lead but could take the abuse of flapping in the breeze while covering rolls of sheet steel being transported over the highways on semi trailers .Fact I had one for years that came covering a big piece of electrical high voltage switch gear .It finally gave up the ghost after 20 plus years of being in the elements covering fire wood stacks .

 

[Tree Reb]

They are heavy alright, and expensive. I used them a lot once.

Pat's one sounds like similar stuff.

I just use shade cloth, it's cheap and you can drag it on concrete. Besides, I got a stack of it for free.

 

[rskybiz]

Shade cloth here also free from a local conduit plant. And like Nick I sew and add my own handles.

 

[Al Smith]

Speaking of filter media ,there's one type which is woven nylon .That stuff is so tough you can't hardly cut it with a Buck knife .They use it for the secondary screen on metal filtration systems used to filter the cutting fliuds used in the metal working in industry .It's tough enough steel chips doesn't cut it .

I have no idea where it can be found but it does get recycled some place .

 

[Tree Reb]

I use old wool bags as well, they are tough but I don't suppose you see too many of them around.



Also have a couple bigger ones with handles and the drop out bottom, use them on cocas palms to catch the seed pods.

 

[Al Smith]

Ha wool bags .They used to use huge burlap bags you could tromp 300 pounds of wool in .

Fact I spent a good portion of my young life as teenager shearing sheep and tromping wool in those things .On a bet once I tromped 400 pounds of lambs wool into a bag .

 

[Cobleskill]

Probably not much sheep in this country anymore.

 

[Tree Reb]

They never were too popular were they.

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[Al Smith]

That's highly sensationalized and pertains to the sparse pasture lands of the American west .Some of that stuff was so poor it took 50 acres to feed one steer .

The demise of the sheep industry in this country is the fact that wool clothing fell out of fashion in the early 70's .Often times the wool crop did not even pay for the farmers shearing bill .

It used to be the rule of thumb that the wool crop would pay the shearing bill plus feed the ewe for an entire year and the profit was the lamb crop .The average lamb crop was often about 150 percent with many ewes dropping twins .

Kinda funny you might have 60-70 ewes and one ram and all would lamb within 3 days .Obviously the old ram was kind of busy for a few days in late fall .

 

[Al Smith]

Speaking of which, heavy tarps , we used a type of heavy canvas in that biz ,sheep shearing .We laid down collapsable plywood mats and spread this heavy canvas that was a 1/4" thick over them to provide a shearing platform .

I have no idea what it was actually used for nor where you could even get it .I'll say this we have bombed bricks from a chimney removal into that stuff and lifted the whole mess with a tractor loader .Never tore ,ripped ,nothing .

 

[Tree Reb]

I just like the "Yellow stinking sheep herder" bit, reminds me of when I worked on a sheep station.

They sure smell, and they can live where cattle will starve.

 

[RopeArmour]

I just like the "Yellow stinking sheep herder" bit, reminds me of when I worked on a sheep station.

They sure smell, and they can live where cattle will starve.

Being a shepherd was my second choice for a career.
College in Alberta is world renowned from what I remember as well as Harley Davidson mechanics school.
Imagine that would have been an interesting to school to attend.

 

[gf beranek]

I repaired tarps when I was a kid. All fabric and waxed and oiled. Heavy heavy heavy. To sew a single patch in a 50 by 20 tarp would take me about an hour. I would have to roll the tarp up on one side to fit it in the machine just to stitch one side of the patch and then follow through for each side. It was gruesome work.

The sewing machine looked like a huge Singer and it had a hundred pound flywheel I had to throw by hand to get the machine to rolling for a ten inch stitch. Tarps were piled up for acre.

I was 15 years old. Sweat factory it was. And not one bit of gratitude from the boss. If one patch wasn't perfect he would make me do it all over again.

The good part is I was pulling in almost $60 bugs a week and a pair of Levi's at the time was 5 bucks. So in spite of all I was in tall cotton.

funny how it goes.

 

[Al Smith]

I looked up that heavy canvas and as near as I can tell it's #2 canvas at 32 oz. per sq. yard .They don't list it in wide widths and they get 18 bucks a yard for it .I was mistaken as it's not a quarter inch but rather 92 thou thick .Original usage was for machine belting .

The widest heavy stuff I could find comes in twelve feet widths .I think it's number 10 canvas and it's pricey too .

To the subject at hand .Would old jute backed carpet do for a heavy cloth to bomb wood it ? If so you can probabley get all you want from a carpet installer free .

 

[RopeArmour]

Hey Al
Thanks for the carpet idea. Brilliant!

 

[MasterBlaster]

I'll stick with foam, lol.

 

[CurSedVoyce]