Saturday, September 26, 2020

Why I got the Wiggy's Hunter Antarctica Sleeping Bag: Silicone coated nylon as one continuous fill

 


 I got the Wiggy's Ultimate Thule sleeping bag a few years ago - and it lived up to its claim: it repels water or dries very fast - so if your clothes are wet - or your body - then the sleeping bag works like a drying oven. It's pretty amazing. Above is my newly stuffed Hunter Antarctica sleeping bag.

Interesting that the silicone coated versions moved moisture 16x better than non silicone.

 http://www.kifaruforums.net/archive/index.php/t-4236.html

So I didn't realize that sleeping bags were such a controversial issue but when your life literally depends on them - then people really do debate them.

 LAMILITE fiber not only doesn’t absorb moisture but allows the moisture, while in a vapor state, to pass through it easily and quickly. This is because of the silicone treatment which acts like a lubricant. Therefore, water in a vapor or liquid form does not affect the LAMILITE. It will always maintain its original loft.

 Never mind that every transverse stitch line creates moisture retention points and/or cold spots. The whole beauty of the laminated-fill process is that it allows you to eliminate that stitching and create a much more efficient insulating layer.

https://www.wiggys.com/wiggys-blog/people-ask-about-the-relationship-of-lamilite-and-climashield/ 

So I actually corresponded with Jerry - maybe via his youtube channel - and he said yes other people also use the bag for meditation. Because it is very wide and square then I can sit full lotus padmasana in the bag.

So the reason I got ANOTHER one - this one is even rated to a warmer temperature - because when I first got the Ultimate Thule I put it in our washing machine - but I didn't read the fine print on the Wiggy's website. It warns that the center agitator on the machine can damage the sleeping bag. Yep that's precisely what happened!

And THEN - I left the bag all year round in the forest and so the bag got all mildewed. So I tried using vinegar - it was not strong enough. So then phosphoric acid got rid of the smell but also destroyed the nylon and the zipper. haha. So NOW I have a Lamilite comforter that was the Ultimate Thule bag...

https://www.wiggys.com/why-lamilite 


 

https://www.wiggys.com/sleeping-bags/hunter-antarctic-rectangular-sleeping-bag/

So these bags are HUGE when laid out. But the idea is that you stuff your clothes into the base of the bag and then they are dry by the morning!!


To be honest - I always really looked forward to my Ultimate  Thule sleeping bag but even having a higher warmer rating will be excellent.

If you're too hot then you just unzip the bottom of the bag, etc.

Wiggy's is not for "hikers" - it's for the military and hunters - people who don't need a light-weight standard...

My biggest issue with them is that they don't pack small enough to fit in a typical internal frame pack. I just use a smaller pack and strap it on the bottom, but it's less than ideal. I haven't experienced any loft loss issues, and I keep mine compressed (because the manual says you can). I haven't washed mine 100 times yet though either. The bags have a lifetime warranty though so if you have a problem just send it back.

That's from 12 years ago!

 https://www.wiggys.com/sleeping-bags/sleeping-bag-accessories/vacuum-packaging/

So that is their small version - but it's as a survival package.

I was relatively warm sleeping except where my body compressed the bag so I just kept flipping from side to side.

 https://bwca.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=forum.thread&threadId=571037&forumID=116&confID=1

 So the Wiggy's bag has noticeably less filling on the bottom side - but that's due to the above reason - that it just compresses anyway.

Even though I may be inserted and extracted by helicopter, I may walk 10 to 15 miles on a typical day, all of it with a pack (including my Wiggy's bag). Although I am not "hiking" the effect is the same. The Marines I described in an earlier post have the same situation. They may use vehicles "when they can" but they still do a LOT of walking (maybe 1500 miles per year or more) with that same full pack on their back. In the Middle East, no, but in training they walk extra. We were on a weekend (3 day) "hike" but they brought their Wiggy's bags instead of the lightweight down ones they all owned.

A Wiggy's bag I now own (a Superlite) is not that much heavier than the Holubar down bag I bought in the 60's. That was a rugged bag too. The new super light bags do not use the same weight of fabric (many use mesh for the baffles) - much lighter, but also much easier to damage.

.....

 The insulation in Wiggy's bags seems to be durable, I think it's basically old school polarguard. The newer polarguard seems to have sacrificed some durability for weight savings, depending upon your point of view the trade off may be worth it.

 https://www.wiggys.com/my-business-life/the-laminal-years

My big break came the next year, 1987, not through mail order or the retail shop—not even through my official Wiggy’s line—but through a contract to make sleeping bags for the US Forest Service. It was a strange turn of events, since I hadn’t even bid on the contract myself, but got it through a guy, Howard Thayer, who ran a company in Tennessee that got—and still gets—all of the big contracts for military bags.

I don’t know how he found out about me, but Howie called me up and said that he knew of a company (turned out it was a company his brother used to own) who needed to get 14,000 sleeping bags made for the Forest Service. They didn’t have time, and did I want to do it? I said sure.

A few days later we all had a business meeting in Clinton, Tennessee, and within a week they were putting a couple of dozen new machines in my factory to make these bags, at a rate of 1000 bags per week. As it turned out, before we had made the first 1000 bags the order had grown to 17,000, and it kept growing.

https://www.wiggys.com/my-business-life/life-in-business-continues 

 I had been supplying the SEAL base in Virginia Beach. He wanted what turned out to be a two bag system. I told him what I developed for the Marines and said he needed -40 degree bag system since his men were training in Alaska. This system became the Super-Light FTRSS (the most popular system sold to both civilians and military).


 
 

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