The Indestructible Puffer - Lightweight edition

A few years ago we built The Indestructible Puffer. It was designed to prevent the kind of end of life scenarios that kill most puffers. Kittens, twigs, children, sharp corners, backpacks, or the passing of time. While it remains the strongest puffer jacket ever built by a very long way, it’s also a beast – the clothing equivalent of climbing into a tank. So The Indestructible Puffer Lightweight edition is designed to be the lightweight, sport version of that.

The engineering brief behind it was to keep as much of The Indestructible Puffer’s strength as possible, while losing as much of the weight as we could. So we’ve worked with the same material technology – Dyneema® – an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene that’s so strong it’s used as anti-ballistic missile protection on the side of tanks, but so light that it floats on water.

The outside of each puffer jacket is constructed from an ultra-lightweight, three-layered material built in Japan. So instead of using one thick, impenetrable and badass layer like we do with The Indestructible Puffer, we weave thousands of strands of 50-denier Dyneema® fibre just two millimetres apart over the surface of the entire jacket to create a protective grid that reinforces every part of the puffer. 50-denier Dyneema® is one of the thinnest types available and known for exceptional lightweight strength.

Dyneema® fibre is the single strongest fibre known to man today. On a weight-for-weight basis it’s up to 15x stronger than steel and 40% stronger than high-strength aramid fibres. It’s so tough it was originally used in body armour, anti-ballistic vehicle armour, and ropes used to tie down oil rigs in violent, icy seas.

The outer material’s middle layer makes it waterproof and breathable at the same time. A porous membrane prevents water getting in from the outside, while allowing sweat vapour to escape from the inside. The outer layer is also treated with a durable water-repellent coating to help water bead up on the surface and roll away. The final layer on the inside is an ultralight recycled nylon. All three ultrathin layers are laminated together to create a single, high-performance material.

Down insulation is only effective if it stays evenly distributed, which we do with chevron baffling. These are carefully engineered channels that hold the down in place and stop it from shifting or collapsing. It’s a low-weight, high-efficiency insulation system that works in sub-zero extremes.

To understand just how tough Dyneema® fibre is, and why we see it as part of the future, you have to look at how it’s being deployed in the world today. It’s used to make bullet-resistant vests, armour and helmets. It’s used in panels on tanks to protect against stronger ballistic threats like anti-tank projectiles. And you’ll find it in bulletproof cockpit doors in most commercial planes in the US. Unlike other high-strength materials it’s so light it floats on water, and it’s resistant to the long-term effects of moisture, UV light and chemicals, which is why it’s now also being used in artificial limbs.

The Indestructible Puffer Lightweight edition is designed to stand up to the kinds of abuse you’ll encounter on the toughest real world adventures. But this is still an ultralight material… so it’s not designed to stop bullets, knives or dumb back-yard tests when you’ve had a couple of beers.