Revamping bouldering mats.

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Fiend

Whut
Joined
Mar 4, 2004
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I'm trying to get a bit more use out of my shitty old Grivels (8 years old and counting, plus a lot of weight impact onto them in that time :rolleyes:), and I snoozed and losed and missed Scouse selling off his Purple Warrior.... Also the repair / reuse principle.

The outer fabric is fairly shredded on a couple, but I've got a local lass who is a seamstress and reckons she can patch them up (better than my current finger tape job...)

That leaves the foam. It's a bit squishy in a couple of them. I did get some reconstituted foam to bulk out the oldest one, but that's so heavy that I tend to only zip it in for roadside highballs. Other than that, is it best to replace to high density foam? Or the low density foam? Or experiment? Any standards I should be looking for?

ta x.
 
I replaced the foam in one of my pads the other year, so I may as well report on my thoughts and experiences.

I replaced both layers of foam ( both open cell and closed cell ) in on old Black Diamond pad ( possibly a Satellite ?). I suspect that in the majority of cases it’s just necessary to replace the open cell foam, but as Black Diamonds mats are terrible it originally didn’t even have a layer of proper polyethylene closed cell foam, but instead a layer of some kind of reticulated foam which really wasn’t up to the job.

I bought the foam from these people:

https://www.efoam.co.uk/

because at the time they seemed to be the cheapest once P+P was taken into account. In April 2023 in cost me £82.

I got a 88 x 100 x 4 cm piece of their severe(very firm) foam, and a 88 x 100 x 3cm piece of closed cell foam. Both cut to size by the supplier, but with square (90 degree) corners. In order to round the corners to the correct profile to fit in my (rounded cornered) mat cover I cut the corners to profile myself, using a breadknife. This worked surprisingly well.

Overall I am happy with the result, compared to the virtually useless mat I had before.

If I was doing it again I would get firmer open cell foam, what I have is a little soft. Most companies quote some kind of firmness rating, efoam did not, I just opted for the firmest they did.

£82 is a lot, but half of that is the closed cell foam, which is significantly more expensive, size for size, than the open cell foam, also 3 cm is unusually thick ( most mats have about 2cm thick) but this was a deliberate choice on my part, as this is a small secondary pad and is mainly used for protecting low starts and levelling the landings of highballs, so I wanted a bit thick lump of closed cell foam to stiffen things up.

The next mat I refill ( the trusty DMM highball will be next) I will get stiffer open cell foam and keep the current closed cell foam.

While on the subject I have had considerable success in the past at rejuvenating tired pads buy simply adding another layer of closed cell foam to the existing foams, so that the pad filling goes closed cell/ open cell /closed cell; rather than the typical closed cell on top of open cell. To do this I have used either thick Karrimat foam or even those interlocking foam squares people put around exercise equipment. This stiffens an old pad up quite a bit, if adding a little weight. But unless you can acquire the extra foam for little or nothing is probably not a great solution.
 
Cheers Dac that is very useful. I've been looking into it a bit more - the ol' Grivels are actually a 2cm closed / 4cm open / 2cm closed sandwich, all at 90cm x 128cm - so quite complicated (£22 for a sheet of 2cm Ethafoam which is used in at least one of the Grivels, or £35 for 2cm closed cell, plus £49 for 4cm severe open cell, all before postage). And I have 3 of them in varying states of sogginess / decrepitude!! So I think I need to do some dismantling and rejigging and assess what needs the most urgent replacing....
 

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