i definitley prefer a waxed cotton to a goretex if active, but if sitting still then goretex is great
layering; ancient and modern how is it done?
- Thread starter Bert
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i definitley prefer a waxed cotton to a goretex if active, but if sitting still then goretex is great
We are not more traditional per se, as we have and are developing lots of new equipment.
Bushcrafting and fishing has been a national hobby and way of life since at least a century.
Most of us have tied new materials, buy realise there are nrgative serious trade offs with them.
Btw, I did buy a couple of woolen socks too.
Bushcrafting and fishing has been a national hobby and way of life since at least a century.
Most of us have tied new materials, buy realise there are nrgative serious trade offs with them.
Btw, I did buy a couple of woolen socks too.
the 'wicking' t-shirts are one of the let downs of the current uniform - they were very much a cheap afterthought in the PCS development programme. you aren't wearing them wrong, they are just cheap rubbish built from cheap, poorly performing material. i don't know anyone outside of basic training who wears them in the field - and what people wear is everything from merino wool, silk, old-style Helly Hansons and everything in between.
most of the other issue stuff is pretty good, but the 'buffalo' look-a-like (Thermal Smock is its official name) is the big let down - its has a design fault in that the arm sizing is too restictive, its an absolute pig to take off, but it has a more fundamental failure - its supposed to be a mid-layer garment, with your windproof or gore-tex over the top, but it has a pertex layer itself like the original Buffalo, so you end up wearing two windproof/showerproof layers. that doesn't keep you any drier, but it does make it twice as hard for water vapour (sweat) to evapourate out, meaning that the fleecy lining of the thermal smock tends to get soaked in sweat that can't escape.
it can of course be used in civvy street as a cheap buffalo, and if it fits you then its great, but i much prefer an actual buffalo.
the softie-look-a-like jacket (the reversible sand/green one) is very good, its ridiculously long in the body which means it covers your bum while standing around windswept Artillery ranges in February (i'm 5'8'' with a 44'' chest, i wear a Medium and it will happily go over a baselayer, fleece and Gore-tex, or a buffalo S6. its one failing is that compresses relatively large compared to a modern civvy equivilant, however you can buy one on ebay for £20... its showerproof, but not waterproof, it will brush off a bit of rain/sleet/snow, especially if there's a decent breeze, but it will wet through if you wear it as the outerlayer in persistant rain.
personally the stuff i rate are the Alt-berg and Haix boots, any Berghaus Yeti gaiters you can get, the PLCE Infantry Bergen (it weighs about 3kg, but its comfortable with a decent load, its utterly indestructable, and you can pick up a decent condition one for about £40), the various Gore-tex jackets and trousers, the softie jacket, and the gore-tex over-mitts.
Yes , It's those wicking T-shirts that I mentioned, the first brown have a hollow fiber, scratch as a lunatic!, I think in the batch I bought there's one with silver ion treated, and that 's the one a bit decent, doesn't scratch too much, and I guess with that treatment doesn't smell too quickly either.altbergs I have as well, though I think the soles wear a bit too fast, other than that they are wonderfull!, I got the GS Mk2 gaiters, used them last winter in the snow, and apart from that I didn't know/knew how to ty that cord beneath the boot, they are great as well! the plce bergen, is that the woodland one? I don't have any experience with the buffalo, is it worth it?
the PLCE bergen comes in olive green, from the mid-90's, woodland DPM from the late 90's/early 2000's, and MTP from about 2010. the design is exactly the same in all three. personally i prefer the Berghaus Cyclops Roc and Cyclops Crusader - they were made in the 1980's and early 90's and are much, much lighter than the PLCE, but will last as long and are just as big/practical. the Cyclops Vulcan is very similar to the PLCE vastly more comfortable to wear.
personally i wouldn't bother with the Thermal Smock, for me its design is too compromised - you'll pick up a vastly superior Buffalo Special 6 or Mountain Shirt for not much more on ebay.
Ok thanks, Oh I forgot, there are quite much blouses/jackets/smocks now that have the too restricted armpits now, I had have a few cs95 smocks, they were well to the size, and none of them restictive, but for the PLC smock, where they sewn in those armpit zippers, it's those zipper that restrict quite a bit, I had a seamstress addsome tissue, and now that smock is comfortable. I think that's a big negative that they don't take that into account at the MOD!
Tha buffalo, it should be snug to the body?
Tha buffalo, it should be snug to the body?
natural is always best, layers should be baggy to trap the air between. I sweat a LOT all the time, thyroid problems, even at 0 degrees my inner layer is always wet. Cotton and wool may dry slower, but they insulate even when wet so I would go with the cotton t , cotton or wool shirt, wool jumper and waxed cotton jacket\ smock. There is a reason these natural materials were used for thousands of years, and that's because they work. That nylon crap, leave it on the shelf
i disagree massively - different materials have different properties and they do different things - if you stand in driving rain for hours on end in a waxed cotton jack, even if it was professionally waxed the day before, it will eventually wet through. you could stand there for a month in a gore-tex jacket and the water won't come through - and personally i don't find the waxed cotton jackets much more comfortable to wear than a decent membrane jacket: a bit, yes, they are more a bit comfortable to wear in a warm pub than a gore-tex, and on a warm day - but i don't wear one on a warm day, i'd rather get wet from the rain than get wet from sweat and be all clammy.
the advantage they have, imv, is how easy they are to repair in the field, the disadvantage they have is that its a right faff to reproof them.
conversely, i don't know anyone who doesn't prefer a merino baselayer to a synthetic one - they are just much more comfortable to wear - for mid-layers however synthetic fleece trumps wool every day of the week: it weighs about 25% of what wool weighs, it dries quickly, its still fairly effective when its wet, and a £25 fleece jumper will be as warm as a £70 wool jumper. if i go to the pub i'll wear wool, coz i is well classy, but if i was to do a 5 day walk across Mid-Wales in November i wouldn't touch wool with a 90ft bargepole (insert sheep-shagging joke here) - if i got it wet on day one it would still be wet on day 5, even if i stayed in bothies every night with an open fire. no thanks...
we used rocks for perhaps 100,000 years, and then metal came along - no doubt someone will come along and tell me they use a flint carving knife....
I just received a flint knife from a famous Norwegian archeologist/ flint knapper.
Will be interesting to see how well it cuts!
Will be interesting to see how well it cuts!
These days it's so warm, between noon and 1600 you hardly see anyone on the streets. And I found a "Jacket, combat, Tropical"
Boy are these nice to wear! they are so different than the temperate.
It's a marvel what they can do these day's with weaving tissue, this tissue is so open, the wind passes through very easy.
I also read that the Finnish army has tunics out of a poly/cotton, woven so that quite a bit of the poly is on the outside, good wear resistance, and the most of the cotton is on the inside, so that it's comfortable to wear.
well, in 1988 this for sure didn't exist!
Boy are these nice to wear! they are so different than the temperate.
It's a marvel what they can do these day's with weaving tissue, this tissue is so open, the wind passes through very easy.
I also read that the Finnish army has tunics out of a poly/cotton, woven so that quite a bit of the poly is on the outside, good wear resistance, and the most of the cotton is on the inside, so that it's comfortable to wear.
well, in 1988 this for sure didn't exist!
These days it's so warm, between noon and 1600 you hardly see anyone on the streets. And I found a "Jacket, combat, Tropical"
Boy are these nice to wear! they are so different than the temperate.
It's a marvel what they can do these day's with weaving tissue, this tissue is so open, the wind passes through very easy.
If that's the old 'Junglies' then they were a real favourite of everyone (great in a Croatian/Bosnia Summer). Not so hot in Belfast as they had a high poly content so stuck to people when they were on fire - I think they may have actually been banned in NI.
Great! (not the burning thing though) but "high"poly content? only 30%, while the regular "temperate" has a 50/50% of poly.
It was what we were all told. But, who are we to question what the chain of command tells us, it's always the truth, right?
It was probably an attempt to stop people from looking different.
It was what we were all told. But, who are we to question what the chain of command tells us, it's always the truth, right?
It was probably an attempt to stop people from looking different.
no, it was the truth - the issue waterproofs were also supposed to be banned (and technically, they were) for the same reason: they would melt into the skin if they caught fire, but there was then a trade off between the risks of burns caused by the plastics, and the risks of everyone getting hypothermia during a winter tour.
it was the reason that Barbour produced DPM waxed jackets and trousers - they were done in a response to an MOD request to produce a less flammable waterproof, but three things went against them: the cost, which (iirc) was about 6 times the cost of the nylon waterproofs (it should be remembered that we had something like 15/20,000 troops in NI, with a total force, including reserves, of about 360,000, so it wasn't pocket money), the requirement of waxed cotton to be re-proofed regularly if used heavily, and the fact that the waxed DPM pattern, wen wet, turned almost black, making soldiers stand out like the proverbials on a bulldog.
The kits chnaged, the
The kits changed for the better, but the principles are the same.
Issue kits is fine but there are better civvy alternatives imo,
Sticking with issue kit what i normally wear in this weather is the ubac on top, then combats with underarmour keks on the legs, remember that your body armor insulates a fair bit of heat. Warm kit isn't really needed until some form of extended stop.
If i was to go for a walk in the hills with a daysack then it would be tshirt and either the lightweight jacket or smock. Usually i walk in just a t-shirt or baselayer top since i tend to run a bit warm and hate feeling sweaty. I'll put something thin and windproof on if its getting bad, if its just still air and cold then sometimes a fleece pullover which is breathable enough to let the sweat out but adds a bit of warmth.
Keep cool and only put on warm kit at stops, i don't wear any waterproofs until it starts to rain.
The kits changed for the better, but the principles are the same.
Issue kits is fine but there are better civvy alternatives imo,
Sticking with issue kit what i normally wear in this weather is the ubac on top, then combats with underarmour keks on the legs, remember that your body armor insulates a fair bit of heat. Warm kit isn't really needed until some form of extended stop.
If i was to go for a walk in the hills with a daysack then it would be tshirt and either the lightweight jacket or smock. Usually i walk in just a t-shirt or baselayer top since i tend to run a bit warm and hate feeling sweaty. I'll put something thin and windproof on if its getting bad, if its just still air and cold then sometimes a fleece pullover which is breathable enough to let the sweat out but adds a bit of warmth.
Keep cool and only put on warm kit at stops, i don't wear any waterproofs until it starts to rain.
