Repairing Kit - a zip fix

At Christmas Claire bought me this little book, sort of jokingly as we fix just about everything with gaffer tape. It turned out to be a rather handy guide to a whole range of repairs that you can do to prolong the life of your kit.

I've had this Montane lightweight windproof for over a decade. It was an impulse buy when I was trying to travel lightweight, and although it's very thin and doesn't provide much warmth I ended up using it an awful lot for running. Having torso covered on a windy day provides me with just the right level of warmth on a breezy day, especially in the Spring and Autumn.

So I was quite put out a couple of weeks ago when the zip puller snapped. Looking closely the hinge where the tab joined the puller was intact, but the tab itself had corroded away. So we found a suitable sized steel ring from Claire's jewellery making kit and poked that through. I soldered it shut, pulled on it and... the hinge snapped.

Bugger.

It sat around waiting for me to come up with another bright idea for a couple of weeks. I had a look online and found that a replacement was quite costly (85 quid). There were Alpkit and Ron Hill alternatives around half the price but both were quite heavy in comparison. Zip pullers were only a couple of quid from ebay but I wasn't that confident about removing the stopper and didn't want to commit to a job that I'd never get around to.

Meanwhile, I've been modifying a Montane rucksack to suit my purposes better, which involved removing the zip pocket from one of the shoulder straps and replacing it with an OMM pocket. As a result I had a small size C zip kicking about in the kitchen.

Whilst waiting for a cup of tea to brew I carefully removed the zip stopper (a little plastic grommet) from the top of the zip (on the side where the puller was) with a very sharp pocket knife. Taking the puller from the spare zip (by just cutting the zip open and sliding it off) I slid it onto the windproof zip. Tested it and hey presto, worked a treat.

A few stitches in the zip in place of the stopper I cut out and it works fine. Good as ever, saving me quite a bit of cash, and avoiding a big lump of polyester in the landfill.

In the process I learned that zips come in specific (standard) sizes, the bits are interchangeable, and 'stoppers' can be removed/replaced (just with a few stitches of cotton is easiest).