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  The short term exposure test is something I’ve done hundreds of times and the results were not surprising at all to me. It was more to provide a visual representation, instead of me just stating things. This long term test is something I haven’t specifically done, in this exact way, and the results were […]

    https://youtu.be/kf2mO0ivGDQ   There is a click bait video circulating right now that makes some bold claims about down being hydrophobic. I think most people with ample experience with down stuff can see through this sort of misleading information, but it uses some real shock value testing that catches people who maybe don’t quite […]

Nowadays, with the tools we have available to us, it seems super obvious that using total fill weight to assess warmth of down items is highly inaccurate. So why do we do it? Like most things like this, I think it was born out of a different time when maybe it made more sense than […]

I often see questions around sizing that sound like this…..” Is it true to size? ” or ” Does it fit big or small? “. I struggle with how to answer these questions because, technically, there is no way to answer them. There is no real ” standard ” size template that everyone must follow. […]

My perspective and intention with regards to life outdoors is that comfort and performance should be a combination of well designed gear and human adaptation. That adaptation should be both physical and intentional. In modern society we are continually pushed towards technology that is designed to do all the work for a negligent user. I […]

I ended up posting these as regular pages on the site instead of here in the blog so here are the links! https://timmermade.com/technology/total-fill-weight-explained-with-visuals/ https://timmermade.com/technology/calculated-loft-explained-with-visuals/  

There has been some speculation around how much insulation is necessary for an over-system to perform it duty in managing internal condensation. Some have speculated that an Alpha over-system is not enough to perform, but this is absolutely un-true. The science of what is actually happening when using an over-system is rather complicated, with many […]

The down gear industry has not done a very good job of providing its consumers with valuable information regarding warmth comparisons. Sometimes it seems to me as if the industry has completely forgotten all of humanity’s previous efforts to quantify insulation, and started from scratch, as if we’ve never done it before. Wild and bizarre, […]

We’ve already established the definition of overstuff as density added to a base fill amount. Base fill amount is enough to just fill a volume. Density added to that is overstuff. However, one thing we should keep in mind is that this density is not in a rigid box. If that were the case, then […]

As a tiny shop, building everything from scratch, by hand, we have a very limited ability to supply our demand. If our first lottery is any indication, it appears we are supplying around 10 – 15% of people who are interested. It is really interesting to see the different reactions to this reality. I’d say […]