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Total Fill Weight Variables

By Dan Timmerman | October 28, 2025 | 0 Comments

It’s always been very obvious to me, why using total fill weight, spread into an unknown area, can’t be an effective comparison metric. Over the years, there have been hundreds of examples of people being led astray by it, and this continually backs up my position on it. However, to anyone who isn’t constantly exposed […]

Temperature Rating

By Dan Timmerman | September 11, 2025 | 0 Comments

As we head towards autumn here in the NEUS, the first few cool nights are often a bit of a shock. After our bodies spent the hot summer adapting to staying cool in warm weather, they are ill equipped to conserve warmth in cool weather. It always highlights, to me, how much the perception of […]

Customizable Fill Density for Down Sweaters

By Dan Timmerman | August 29, 2025 | 0 Comments

Fill density in sewn through items is a balance between calculated loft and chamber width. As standard, our sweater fill density is optimized for static use, trying to maximize the warmth to weight ratio. There are cases where down garments get flexed into semi-active use where a higher density might be ideal. Examples might be […]

Down and Moisture – Long term exposure

By Dan Timmerman | August 22, 2025 | 0 Comments

  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 […]

Down and Moisture – Short term exposure

By Dan Timmerman | August 19, 2025 | 5 Comments

    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 […]

How did we even get here?

By Dan Timmerman | August 14, 2025 | 0 Comments

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 […]

Sizing

By Dan Timmerman | August 14, 2025 | 0 Comments

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. […]

Comfort

By Dan Timmerman | August 11, 2025 | 0 Comments

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 […]

Down fill metrics (with visuals!!)

By Dan Timmerman | May 15, 2025 | 2 Comments

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/  

Overbag / Quilt Selection

By Dan Timmerman | March 13, 2025 | 3 Comments

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 […]