Heavy Duty Eyelets

Hi Rod,

Obviously there is a lot of force being placed on the small area of the eyelet.

Try cutting a tennis ball in halves, drill or punch a hole in the ball, thread it over the tent pole pin before placing the pin through the eyelet.
The ball will spread the load over a greater area.

There are also accessories available in camping stores which are plastic hemispheres with a coil spring under, designed to be placed on the pole. Only problem is that they are intended to be used where there is no eyelet and so have no pin. The absence of a pin makes them unstable but you could add a pin to overcome this.

Had same problem my solution was to sew a disc of canvas 300mm dia onto the tarp both sides (my tarp had a large hole) and put the eyelet in the ctr (you can get heavy duty eyelets) then get a loop sewn next to the eyelet which you can tie down to the adjuster screw on the pole - this stops the flapping in strong wind i also peg down the base of the pole
Hope this makes sense if not i'll try to post a sketch
works for me
Cheers Kev

Try sewing a" D" ring to the tarp and this will prevent this. A canvas or horse rug guy / girl ( not wanting to appear sexist in the modern world) will know what you need.

You can go to a bigger eyelet (normally tarps have a SP4 eyelet) that being a number 6 but I suspect the same thing will happen.

Hi Rod...
You will find that the problem is simply a cheap tarp, what they say is h/d was the cheap of old, to be honest even the VERY H/D ones now days are what we used to sell as very cheap "alternatives" ............
Yes you can get some gussets sewn in around the eyelets to make then stronger but it will cost you and you still have a "cheap" tarp, and to make it worse it is actually getting very hard to even BUY a good tarp these days .....
Cheers
Joe

Rod
You problably don't go to the beach when its raining so if you get a shadecloth tarp which is suppose to stop 96% or thereabouts of sun the wind just blows through it and doesn't flap about to much.
I have been using a 5m x 3.6m for years now and its eyelets are still showing little signs of wear.

Cheers
Mal

Thanks All. I have had the tarp repaired today with another gusset and eyelet so will see how it goes.