Tarptent Moment major modifications

The Tarptent Moment in original guise.

The Tarptent Moment is a very good one man lightweight tent as i have posted before here. The weight of it is 0.85kg.
Having used it on it’s inaugural outing to the Scottish Borders i was made aware of a number of issues that i didn’t like and that would have to be put right.
The roof air vents would not stay open so this was resolved with a plastic stay.

There is a little more info on the stay here if anybody wants to make the support.

One of the ties holding the groundsheet had come away from its retainer so this needed to be sewn back and i glued it too to stop it happening again.

The 6” pegs/stakes were replaced with 8” ones so that they would cope with soft ground better.
2 guy lines were fitted to the main hoop pole sleeve. The ribbon was existing but not the cord or 2 extra pegs.
The zippers were quite small and these i put on extension cords so that finding them and operating them would be easier.
The inner door and outer door retainers were just elastic and had to be tied to retain the rolled up doors. I found these were poor and loosened off, especially in the wind.
I looped one side of the elastic and added a sliding cord grip to the other.

For me though the biggest and the main problem i found was the inner door. It was so restrictive and didn’t allow full use of the highest part of the tent. It also made getting hold of gear from under the porch problematic. So it had to be changed.

The original doorway.

I looked at doing the job myself but with no sewing skills at all and even worse, no machine i thought i had better look for help.
The help came from Robin, aka blogpackinglight. He put me onto Sean at Oookworks in Cumbria.
Strange name, which i will come to later.
I emailed Sean, showing him what i wanted and he suggested taking out the whole door and replacing it with a new mesh doorway incorporating an inverted “T” shaped zip.

With the Moment being single skin, the mesh is hemmed and stiched to the outer so i had doubts that it could be removed but i sent the tent off and waited to hear from Sean after he had chance to look at it in the flesh.
He said it could be done.
I waited eagerly for it’s return and when it happened it was immediately pitched in the garden. It was raining but what the heck i had to see it.

It’s absolutely fantastic. Sean picked the stitching from the mesh leaving the hem in place on the outer and replaced the whole door with a grey mesh instead of the original black.
The grey mesh believe it or not makes the inside so much lighter and makes looking out of the tent more pleasant.
The inverted “T” zip is the same spec as the original, 5mm YKK nylon.

Once the doors are open the Moment now looks cavernous. I can now sit sideways and have full access to the porch. It makes cooking so much easier. It makes getting in and out so much easier.
On wet days you can have the inner doors rolled back giving you more room to move around and on bug free nights you can leave the doors rolled up.

It is just fantastic now so thank you Sean for a wonderful job done and thank you Robin for putting me onto Sean.
The name Oookworks i am told was derived from the Terry Pratchet book where the Librarian at the Unseen University is an Orang Utan, who was once a wizard but now prefers being Simian and just says Ook.
Sean has added an extra O to the Oookworks name and says that it seemed a good idea at the time or maybe a few beers were involved. Anyway thats the story of the strange name.

Here are some pictures of the new doorway.

 How much better does the above photograph look in comparison to the original. Photo1.

So for the additional weight of a metre of zip the advantages far outweigh the penalty in my view. And now makes the Moment perfect or should it be magic. 

If anybody with a Tarptent Moment or any other tent or piece of outdoor gear would like the same or similar modifications done then Sean at Oookworks, see website here would only be too pleased to carry out your requirements. I can recommend him.