How to seal seams in membrane clothing

Vladimír Bureš 13.01.2024

The seams are glued with high quality English tape Bemis, width 13 mm. The tape is available in grey or black for 3-layer laminates and transparent for lightweight materials.

How can we help you or what does reseaming bring to the user?

• resistance to moisture penetration.
• because we sew with double stitching, the gluing further strengthens the place where the 2 parts are joined
• and, frankly, it's also going to add a gram to the price of the cloth and a gram to the weight...
• The tape is "plastic", it prevents the membrane from working in the glued area. Hence - the less we glue, the more "functionality". As always, it's about trade-offs. The jacket is not a shapeless and seamless tunnel
• The ergonomics of the garment require taping and each jacket hides many metres of tape in the reverse.

Why not glue at home?

A little warning about repair kits. Please do not repair yourself. Yeah, I know it myself. When something goes wrong in the mountains, a quick fix will prevent further tearing of fabric, snow and wind intrusion, or even a cold. It's probably justified here.
But if you're planning to repair at our place, we're happy not to. There are various repair kits, patches and adhesives available online. But you're not always in extreme conditions. If you splash glue on the fabric or burn it with something, we won't be able to remove it. We won't use aggressive chemicals. You'll destroy your vapor permeability. The most we can do is put a patch here, but either way, the garment is usually degraded. And we can't fix glued seams. Amateur repair is really an emergency, it won't last long.

Faramugo offers repairs of membrane clothing and equipment. And not only our production, but also other brands.

• and it's really alchemy, there are quite a few adjustable values in a given ratio
• In the vast majority of cases, repair is possible, but still.... We don't know the required application temperatures and pressures of other manufacturers. Some reputable membrane manufacturers and processors do not provide this data as a trade secret (neither do we), others, non-renowned, often don't even know it themselves.
• Sometimes we would rather refuse to perform a service than hand over a bad result.
• Sometimes the old tape cannot be removed without damaging the garment. But usually it is enough to heat it up, perhaps with an iron. Please heed the warning from Brussels that the iron is hot and you may burn yourself on it. Rum will also heat up and you will not burn yourself on it. Here it is clear which is better.
• and gluing softshell? It's difficult to glue. Because of the "hairy" inner layer, the tape just doesn't stick to it.
• cheap jackets around 1-2k. I'm not sure. There's really no point in gluing... The tape doesn't stick, the functionality of the membrane is zero.

• jackets are often not sewn at all. The individual pieces of fabric just stick together with tape. So we don't glue it, it falls apart in our hands and we're not magicians. Unfortunately.

• first of all, we offer any repairs to our nanomembrane clothing. Warranty and post-warranty. However, what we often refuse with apologies are clothes of so-called Czech brands, manufactured in Asia. These things are simply by design destined to fall apart quickly and definitively. This also applies to things with an older production date; we usually don't glue together a ten-year-old "gore" anymore.

We offer only partial bonding and minor repairs. Why don't we glue someone else's whole jacket?

• Complete gluing of a foreign jacket, whose construction we do not know, is so difficult that it is cost-prohibitive compared to a new jacket. Let's face it - we don't want to pull hot chestnuts out of the fire for those who get sewn cheaply in Asia, make a profit, and abdicate further responsibility. The repairs really do exceed the cost of the garment
• We don't get into the creases, sleeves, etc. We glue the part during production, sew, glue, etc. until the jacket is complete.
• If the tape doesn't stick to the fabric, the new tape won't stick either. The fabric contains residues of glue, sweat, dirt, detergents..... Or simply the fabric has had its day and is delaminating.....

• Once a jacket has been glued, it has glue residue on it, it will stain our glue roller. Which is unfair to the people we then sew a new Faramugo jacket for.

• for information - you can find ultrasonic bonding on the outdoor market. No need to glue, but this technology has a lower bond strength against stitching and once you tear, it's unrepairable.

Do not attempt repairs at home.

• You can do it with an iron, but... That glue machine isn't free, it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds. You can't put pressure, it's in the tens of kilograms. And the temperature too. The air blown on the tape is hundreds of degrees Celsius.

We offer a 3-year warranty and full service on Faramugo products.

Finally, some advice on what to look out for when buying.

From the customer forum on the outdoor website: "Unfortunately I have to start another not very pleasant topic in a short time, namely "Clothing durability", on my about 6 years old membrane jacket, the sticking of the zippers in the armpits went away, only minor unsticking of the zippers appeared, but when I worked on both zippers in the armpits, both zippers came off normally, like a normal adhesive strip, unfortunately it just confirmed my distrust of sticking zips on instead of sewing them on, and looking at all the different membrane jackets and membrane trousers, I think all these clothes have at least one zipper stuck on instead of all sewn on. "

• yes, that's right. Glued zippers fall off over time. But it's more attractive, simpler, and more modern to look at. At Faramug, we sew and tape zippers, and we'll fix a "dropped" zipper the same way.
• As for the improper construction of the garment in terms of gluing, check out the bottom three photos. Glued tape over the drawstring round elastic. The elastic will fall off over time,it will hang down about 1m. Again, only honest sewing and taping will prevent this. Same with the loop. Glued means you won't hang your jacket over time. Last photo - it's not the gluing's fault. Just the drawstring system in the sides is placed rather inconveniently, it will eventually penetrate the fabric around it.