All things Outdoors – Camping like loons!

Tent Zippers: Good News And Bad News

When it comes to tent zippers, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that if your tent zipper hasn’t broken on you yet, and you are an avid camper, sooner or later – it will. We’re no Nostradamus, that’s just how things work. It sucks. The good news is that tent zippers can be fixed. This is the best, quickest, easiest, and most importantly the cheapest (you likely won’t have to spend one thin dime) way to fix a tent zipper. The first time our tent zipper took a powder on us, we were crestfallen. “Damn!”, we said to ourselves. We were none too happy about the prospect of shelling out money for a new tent. Dumb and young as we were, we did what most folks do. Threw out our faithful friend – our tent of three years – and bought an entirely new tent. Two bad things: 1) That tent went into a landfill. Needlessly. We felt bad about that, but we didn’t know any better. 2) We spent good money on a new tent. Dumb. But, after giving it some thought, and a lot of research – although most was frustratingly fruitless – we realized that with a little ingenuity, tent zippers can be fixed. Not only that, but there is a great, easy, quick, – and perhaps most importantly to us Loons – cheap way to fix your tent zipper. It takes less than ten minutes, and you won’t break a sweat. We promise. Today, we at Lone Loon Song are gonna show you four simple steps to make your tent (Or anything with a zipper, really, this trick fixes zippers full stop) as good as new. We’ll even throw in two super useful tips at the end, so read it all the way through. If you know anything about us at Lone Loon Song, you know we hates spending money like the Devil hates holy water. So keep your simoleons. In a hurry? (Of course you are.) Here’s a table of contents:

How To Fix A Tent Zipper For $0.00 Table of Contents:

!#$%! My Tent Zipper’s Broken!

“What’s The Best, Quickest, Easiest, Cheapest Way To Fix A Tent Zipper?”

We apologize for the fuzzy image, but we forgot our glasses – and there was no way we were gonna break the zipper again for the sake of a photo, so just suck it up. We apologize if you can’t see it, but we can easily see that the damn thing is broken. To fix your tent zipper, you need a few items that you have in your house, or can easily borrow them. Here’s what you need:

What You Need To Fix A Tent Zipper

1. Needle nose pliers. (Actually, probably any pliers will do.)
2. A flat head screw-driver. (Or your camping knife will do.)
3. A pencil. (Some folks prefer candle wax.)

Open One Side Of The Slider

You have to do this gently, carefully, yet firmly. We usually choose the right side. That has always worked for us. We can’t vouch for the left side, but there’s no logical reason why that wouldn’t work as well. We have to open the slider so that it is no longer taking in both sides of the zipper. We need to pull one side of the zipper out of the slider so that it’s only attached to the left side of the zipper. Take your time. Deep breath, you got this.

Take the screwdriver (or your camping knife), and carefully pry up one side of the slider on the zipper. Go all the way down from the pointy end to the bottom. Take your time. It should release one side of the zip. It should look like this:

Okay? Okay.

Slide The Slider To The End (Or Top)

That’s enough damage. We’re on the down slide, now. (Goddamn right, pun intended.) What we need now, is to put things right. (Hah!) Slide the slider all the way to the top and push the right side (if you’re us) of the teeth of the zipper back in the slider. But before that happens, we need to make sure the left and the right side are aligned to each other. Do this:

Slide the slider to the top. (So the blunt end is backed up to the top, and the pointy end points toward the other end.) Push the right side of the zip back into the slider. You can use the screw-driver or knife to push that back in. If you’re careful, you’re almost finished. You may have to repeat this step. We had to.

Close Up The Slider

Take the pliers, and once the right side is back in, squeeze them down to close the right side of the slider. (By the way, if you’re curious, we usually include needle nose pliers in our backpack in order to facilitate changing strings on the acoustic guitar. So, other than the pencil, we usually can do this entire repair – soup to nuts – at the campsite. We often don’t have a pencil. In that case, we’ll use candle wax. That’s neither here, nor there.)

Do this in the same way that you opened it. Slowly, gently, and firmly. Up and down right side. We like to do the same thing to the left side, too. It may not be absolutely necessary, but the fact that the thing broke means that stuff is getting loose, so this reduces the possibility of the zipper slipping out of the slider again. (Tip #1: If one zipper has broken, it’s never a bad idea to clamp down all of the zippers on the tent. It just makes sense.) See, the whole reason we’re in this place is that over time, the slider will stretch itself out, and that makes the zipper itself looser. So just give it a whirl. It won’t do you any harm. When you’re finished, run the slider up and down the zipper – gently. Good?

Tip #2: “You Need A New Toothbrush Anyway, Are We Right?”

Take your used toothbrush and brush any sand, leaves, dirt or other junk out of the teeth of the zipper. It’s no fun. On the other hand, how much fun is it fixing your tent zipper? Finished? If you enjoyed this, you’re really gonna love the pencil trick.

Time To Use The Pencil

This is a trick we learned long ago, but we used it to get rid of buzz on the guitar. The graphite in the pencil lead is a natural lubricant. If your strings are buzzing, or difficult to tune, slide a pencil lead in the nut in each of the slots for your top bridge (or the bottom – depending on where the buzz is ) of the guitar. It works really well for the tent zippers, too. So you just take a pencil – freshly sharpened is best – and slide it over the teeth of the zipper. Check the teeth at the same time. If you see irregularities in the zipper’s teeth, straighten them out with a fingernail, or knife. Make sure you check both the left and the right sides. Finished?

You’re pretty much finished. Slide the slider up and down, gently at first, and then you don’t have to worry about it too much. Now you’re finished. Remember the two tips:

• Use the pliers on all of your zipper sliders – If one went, the others can’t be far behind.
• Use an old toothbrush on the entire zippers teeth – both sides – before you fix the slider.

Conclusion

You still here? Get Out There™! We hope that we have helped you save some money, and that you are able to get a lot more life out of your tent. We love this trick – We were trying to remember the first time this happened to us. We’re pretty sure that we tossed the entire tent and bought a new one. Remember: there is a company in The U.K. whose business it is repairing tents abandoned at music festivals, and selling them for perfectly good money.

One last thing: For those of you who regularly check in here and are wondering why we haven’t posted in a while, the answer is that we’ve been busy. As a matter of fact, what prompted this post was the fact that we were in Uchiumi and our tent zipper broke. Now we want to go to Seito for the first week of May. So we had to repair it, and we thought to ourselves, “Selves, it’s possible that this might be of use to others who come to the Lone Loon Song blog, so why don’t you serve up a quick “how-to” article. We sure hope that you found it useful.

Another reason that we haven’t posted is that we were busy writing, recording, mixing and mastering a tune. We also made a video. Those of you inclined to rock and roll might enjoy it. It’s kind of an “elbows-up” thing. Trump pisses us off. You can see it on our YouTube channel. Billionaire’s Debris. We intend to serve up at least two more tunes/videos. It’s a time intensive process, but we’re building that channel, as we are this blog.

As we said, we hope you found this useful. If that is indeed the case, please tell your friends.

See you out there, all the best,

Colin The Loon.