Author name: Dan Timmerman

If you hold a measured loft constant, but you add more fill to it, density goes up and insulation goes up. That is misunderstood as higher density is warmer. If we reverse it and hold the fill quantity constant but reduce loft, density goes up and insulation goes down. The correct conclusion would be that, […]

After the last round of testing down performance in wet conditions, the take-away was that the loft loss that happens when down gets wet, happens when wet down is compressed. If the trapped air in a lofted chamber is maintained, it’s rather difficult to get it wet. You can dunk a lofted chamber under water

The new pocket design is aimed at limiting some of the negative effects pockets can have on garments with loft. Therefore, there are some notes to be made on their use. The bag of the internal pocket is intentionally not connected to the garment. It is only connected at the entry point and at the

Small companies that make up the outdoor cottage industry are a likely source of innovation, due to the design freedom they have. However, these small companies typically don’t have the means, or it simply isn’t practical to spend $15k to protect their ideas for 9 years. Rather, for the most part, these businesses seem to

First, there were sleeping bags with as much insulation on the bottom as there is on the top. When the insulation in those bags became lighter and more delicate, we realized that the weight of a body would compress the insulation, rendering it useless. As a response, along came quilts, which did away with bottom