Follow Up on Henry Lloyd Jacket Issue
- Thread starter Bad Obsession
- Start date
Glad to hear. It is always good to go with a reputable name brand. They will spend money just to protect it. It does not hurt to tap an audience of a few hundred boat enthusiasts. I have had my HL jacket for years and it has not leaked so I'm happy.
They have made changes to the jacket too. It seems thinner and it may breathe better, but it went from a double cuff to a single cuff. Either way, it is a nice jacket. I can't wait to put it through its paces.
I can put a plug in for Gore Tex fabric. I had a Stohlquist dry top for kayaking once. The arm started leaking right in the middle of the forearm e.g. not at a seam. Spoke to customer service at W. L. Gore, sent it to them for testing, and they came back and said the fabric had failed, and I should pick out a new one. By that time, Kokatat was the only company making a full Gore Tex dry top, so Gore sent me a brand new one. My newer drysuit is also Kokatat Gore Tex. If it's good enough for USCG rescue swimmers, a Kokatat Gore Tex drysuit is good for me!
Note that Goretex is not a fabric, but a breathable membrane that the WL Gore company sells and licences to customers. These customers laminate this membrane to the INSIDE of the outer layer of their products. This outer layer is normally condura, ripstop nylon, or leather. They did well by you... normally failure of the membrane is due to faulty installation, or poor design that allows it to be rubbed off by friction.
Jackdaw, I think that Gore certifies manufacturers' fabric constructions, and then warranties the result. There's something like "if your fabric meets these requirements, you are allowed to put our silver level GoreTex patch on it, or gold level patch, etc. and then we will warranty for life." So, yes, I agree with you. GoreTex is definitely a membrane sandwiched between fabric, as opposed to a coating applied as with other brands of waterproof breathable fabrics.
Having grown up in Delaware, home of DuPont, and having had family work for DuPont (heck, my Mom met my father at DuPont, where he was a chemical engineer...) we know people who took DuPont innovations and started their own companies. For example, Mom was friends with the guy who took Tyvek sheet and started making mailing envelopes out of it. And, of course, Bill Gore was the guy who used Teflon (PTFE) to make wiring insulation, and his son Bob Gore figured out how to heat and stretch Teflon to create its microporous structure that allows water vapor to escape, while remaining waterproof. I have friends who worked at W. L. Gore. My Mom knew someone who worked at Gore back when I was a kid, and she got a bunch of off-cuts of cosmetically flawed fabrics. Haha, we made a wood carrier sling out of GoreTex fabric to carry wood in to the wood stove, because Mom had it hanging around in a box. I remember she made me a jacket out of some of it. Wow, that was LOOONG before I worked in an outdoor equipment store and learned about high tech fabrics... I remember my Grandfather doing commercial photography for samples of weathering accelerated panels of Imron paint showing no discernible reduction in shininess. As a matter of fact, the photo in question had 3 Stanley tape measures in front of the 3 Imron sample panels, showing the reflection of the tape measure. I still have one of those tape measures that Granddad gave me!
Wow, thanks for letting me go on that trip down memory lane. DuPont was so important to Wilmington, DE, and people I knew. It bothers me now to hear how they are trying to merge with Dow Chemical in search for more "shareholder value." Grrrrr... don't get me started.
Great story!
And you are right, I re-looked at the Gore guarantee, that's actually kind of amazing. They must do that in conjunction with the garment manufacture, and act as a clearing house for claims. Certainly that cannot stock every piece of goretex gear made.
But I suppose that can do this because it SO RARELY is the membrane that fails.
Jackdaw, I agree that the fabric rarely fails. It's usually the taping of the seams, isn't it? I couldn't believe after a day of rolling the 'yak, that my forearm was soaked. So I rolled up the latex cuff to hold water, and filled the sleeve with water. I expected to see leaky seams, but instead I saw about a 3" by 5" patch of forearm fabric with all kinds of beads of water coming out!
Working at an outdoor equipment store, you get people coming in looking for GoreTex, and sometimes it seems their impression is that a GoreTex jacket is like having built-in climate control, including air conditioning. Well, that's certainly not the case. I guess it points to good marketing from Gore, though
And there are many, many competing products now, sometimes much less expensive than GoretTex. And they seem to work OK. But when you look at that Gore guarantee, the extra cost could be offset by that guarantee. Of course, the new new fancy is eVent fabric, supposedly the most breathable water proof stuff EVAR. It's kinda true, I have a dry bag made of it, and you can literally evacuate the air inside it right through the end panel of eVent. I remember the first eVent jacket we sold, a co-worker wrote a review, saying she needed a heavier insulation layer because the wind blew through the eVent shell and made her colder than usual! Wow!
Then, there was that one time when I needed new ski pants, and all we had was non-breathable... That was the one and only time I skied in non-breathable material: I was soaked from the waist down at the end of the day. Even the much less expensive Columbia waterproof breathable fabric ski pants work a damn-sight better than non-breathable! (Hence why I ponied up for the GoreTex dry top, and later the full dry suit...)
Sometimes I think about the old timers, with their wool sweaters and pea coats, with ice and snow and spray left and right, and I know they were harder men than I will ever be!
Working at an outdoor equipment store, you get people coming in looking for GoreTex, and sometimes it seems their impression is that a GoreTex jacket is like having built-in climate control, including air conditioning. Well, that's certainly not the case. I guess it points to good marketing from Gore, though
And there are many, many competing products now, sometimes much less expensive than GoretTex. And they seem to work OK. But when you look at that Gore guarantee, the extra cost could be offset by that guarantee. Of course, the new new fancy is eVent fabric, supposedly the most breathable water proof stuff EVAR. It's kinda true, I have a dry bag made of it, and you can literally evacuate the air inside it right through the end panel of eVent. I remember the first eVent jacket we sold, a co-worker wrote a review, saying she needed a heavier insulation layer because the wind blew through the eVent shell and made her colder than usual! Wow!Then, there was that one time when I needed new ski pants, and all we had was non-breathable... That was the one and only time I skied in non-breathable material: I was soaked from the waist down at the end of the day. Even the much less expensive Columbia waterproof breathable fabric ski pants work a damn-sight better than non-breathable! (Hence why I ponied up for the GoreTex dry top, and later the full dry suit...)
Sometimes I think about the old timers, with their wool sweaters and pea coats, with ice and snow and spray left and right, and I know they were harder men than I will ever be!
I felt quite confident, after my excellent experience with Henri Lloyd, that they would take good care of you. Glad they did. They have a booth at some of the sail shows, like Annapolis. I stopped by and was able to thank the guy who took care of me in person.
Spread the word!
Spread the word!