Tin pants

[Marc1]

Hi there.

Considering this are traditional in the US, I thought you guys would be the best to answer this.

Does anyone of you use the "Double Tin Pants" by a company named Filson? 

I like the reviews and was thinking in getting a pair. At $200 they are not cheap jeans, and hope they perform better than. 

Do you use them?

Since these are not being sold by IFI,  they do not belong in the IforgeIron Store, they are being relocated

[Frosty]

I'm not familiar with Double Tin Pants I haven't worn Filsons in a couple decades.  They're very tight weave and impregnated with wax to keep you dry and provide a degree of armor. Loggers started calling them Tin Pants for the sound they make when you walk in them, they sound like thick tin foil being crumpled and anything that hits them makes a definite thwack sound. They last a lot longer than any other work pants I know of.

You wash them with a hose and cold water,  hot water and soap washes out the wax after a few washes and you might as well toss them out, they're too heavy and stiff to wear if they're not water proof. If you need really tough and water proof they're worth the money. 

I can't imagine Double Tin Pants, how would a guy move? The regular ones put sores on your legs where they wrinkle when you move until they break in and you toughen up.  Double Tin pants must be like taking wire cutters to your legs! 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Direwolf]

Hi Marc, I lived in Southeast Alaska for 25 years and the weather there is wet to the extreme, rain and wind nearly every day. I worked outside every day usually 7 days a week. I wore the Filson double Tin pants quite a bit especially if I was running chainsaw clearing survey lines. They are tough and will keep you as dry as raingear as you sweat more in raingear. As Frosty mentioned don't wash them, and you can treat them with wax which Filson sells. First thing in the morning they are stiff and somewhat uncomfortable but as you move around between the heat from your body and rain they soften up. I usually could get 2 years of hard use out of a pair in the woods between running chainsaw and just walking. The old growth forests are often brushy lots of blowdown trees, devils club, brush. In the forests the trees are huge, big ones not uncommonly up to ten feet in diameter 200 feet tall or more and usually on steep mountain sides so we were always fighting through some tough areas to walk and work. They can be uncomfortable on a hot day in the sun, so depending on your use and climate you might like them. I think if you don't wear them every day and work like I did a pair will last many years. Filson also makes single layer tin pants, also hats and jackets all of which I have had and worn. I still have a couple hats and a beat up pair of tin pants. I haven't worn them in a long time but I just might have to as I'm getting kind of nostalgic while writing this, there's nothing like standing there in the rain bucking a massive Sitka spruce or Alaska Yellow cedar with a Stihl 090 chainsaw! Well hope this helps you    

[Frosty]

You describe SE to a tee, I think of it as almost vertical rain forest. I bought my first pair at the Tongass Trading Company in Ketchikan. We never cut the big trees so all we took in SE was a Stihl 045 to clear the way to winch the drill past. All we did was trim dog hair, nothing over a 4' butt or we called in a pro feller.

Did flat ground in SE make you nervous? It usually meant we were walking on floating grass or stressed roots, either is a bad place to walk. 

I think Devil's club was what I liked best about my Tin pants. Hot days were the worst and I never wore them on sunny days. Just thinking about my Tin pants brings back memories.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

If you can’t buy tin pants, steal a pair. 

[Marc1]

7 hours ago, Direwolf said:

. I still have a couple hats and a beat up pair of tin pants. I haven't worn them in a long time but I just might have to as I'm getting kind of nostalgic while writing this, there's nothing like standing there in the rain bucking a massive Sitka spruce or Alaska Yellow cedar with a Stihl 090 chainsaw! Well hope this helps you    

Wow, Direwolf, those are some big trees you have there. I have only occasionally seen gumtrees getting to that size. 

Stihl 090, made in Germany not Brazil or China are not longer made, still some nice one available down here at premium prices. I once had this thing with Homelite and knocked together a nice little collection of vintage Homelites. The biggest is a 1050, XP or XL not sure. 100 cc cuts almost anything you can put in front of it. 

So the pants are bulletproof but a tad heavy. May be I can go for the single layer instead of the double layer. Was reading on the history of this pants and how they came to be to supply the gold rush workers. Both Filson and Levi started that way. the Filson are supposed to use the canvas they made the tents back in those days. 

May be I get a set of single layer pants, a jacket and a hat just for laughs. Only for winter I guess. No good for Australian summer ... and no need for washing? Ripper!  

[Direwolf]

Hi Frosty and Marc,

Yeah Frosty, the flat ground was a lot of muskeg definitely wore rubber boots exclusively. I worked my career for the US Forest Service. We would set up tent camps in muskegs and lay out survey roads for timber sales stay out a month at a time then into town for a wild weekend. I lived in Wrangell a small town north of Ketchikan, beautiful area, when the skies clear there is no place on earth as beautiful. I remember many times after field season was over I would be picking devils club thorns out of my hands for a month! I worked out of Ketchikan for a few months in 1981, when we were in town stayed at the Ingersoll hotel right across the street from Tongass Trading. It would be fun to sit down with you guys and tell tales of life in the remote corners of SE Alaska, I used to get paid to do things most folks only dream about if they can even imagine it!

Marc, the Pacific Northwest of the USA from N California to Southeast Alaska is wet timber growing country. The old growth forests are incredible. If you like old logging check out photographs  by Darius Kinsey, famous for logging photos late 1800's early 1900's in the Pacific Northwest. As to the 090 & 075 they were not our every day saw too big and heavy but if there was a big blowdown they are the only way to go. This was back in the 1980's so old school saws, like they say there is no replacement for displacement when it comes to saws. Here in Wisconsin where I live now a decent 090 will fetch $2,500.00 or so. I still run a Husqvarna 181 se I bought in 1984 it is a heavy old saw, 80cc but still has 170 psi compression and rips through any tree in my woods. I have about 30 acres of big old growth hard maple on my farm which I cut to heat my house. Well enough reminiscing, hope you enjoy the Filson cloths, they also make great wool cloths too. 

[swedefiddle]

Good Morning,

Tin Pants are not Dress Pants, they are work clothes made for working in the rain and allowing your body to breathe. When you take them off, sometimes the pants will stand up in a corner. I use them whenever I am working in the Bush or hunting/fishing. Filson's are made in Seattle and still in business.

Neil

[Frosty]

Marc: If you have a serious rainy season and heavy thorny undergrowth to fight through, Filson single tin pants bib overalls and a jacket with knee high Extratuf rubber boots are THE standard go to daily gear for the hard core crowd. Not cheap but as durable as cotton work clothes get. 

Direwolf: I think we were drilling test holes for bridges on most of your road projects. '81 would be one of the years we spent a lot of time in SE. We stayed at the Super8, the bowling alley had a decent restaurant that opened early enough for the breakfast crowd. But that was after the Harbor View restaurant/bar moved off the waterfront to the bowling alley. When it was on the boardwalk on pilings over the channel it was my hands down favorite place to hang in Ketchikan.

Our last job in Ketchikan was drilling a proposed road above town, they had to do something it's a large city to be serviced it's full length by a 2 lane road through the middle of town. There's a bench a 200'-300' above the city, a stranded shoreline but it's a major bear to take machinery along. There's a spot above the school that made me think they were crazy for putting a school there. We were on a typical SE "hillside" your basic mountain side the site we were drilling on the bench was a place where the bedrock broke and part tumbled down the mountainside leaving a BIG hole in the stone bench. The bench is maybe 3-4 lanes wide and the next place it's actually a slop is about 100' straight down then maybe 200' of really steel, SE mountainside slope is the school. There are detached blocks of bedrock that broke loose, and rolled a ways directly above the school, imagine boulders the size of 2 car garages rolling down a 60*+ slope into your kid's school building. 

We drilled so many must have a bridge to cross sites on that project I was thinking it'd be easier and cheaper to just make it all a bridge. 

I'd love to sit down over coffee and reminisce about time in the bush. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[VaughnT]

Another option, and one not often mentioned, is military-spec battle dress uniform (BDU) pants in a "ripstop" cotton/poly blend.  With the double-thick knees and seat, as well as the extra-heavy stitching, they are a great bit of kit in an environment where you are working hard.  I would often use a pair of small snips to pull the stitching on the thigh pockets because I'm not a fan of them.  Getting rid of the thigh pockets made them far less prone to snagging as I moved through the woods or workshop, and I never missed the loss of storage capacity.

I found them very nice for working in warm weather.  Never had a seam tear or such, so I'd usually only be done with them once they faded to a point or I gained a few too many pounds.

Like the Tin Pants, the BDU's are a tool in the toolbox and come in mighty handy if the circumstances are right.  The only downside is finding a make/model that fits you right.  With military gear being all the rage for police, reenactors, ambulance crews, et al, you can get them in all the hues and shades you might like, but a lot of the makers are just churning out junk that's cut wrong and fits poorly.  Best to visit a local store to get the right pair, and then stick with that brand.  I'd buy several pairs at once, trying them all on, and then hope the maker didn't change things up by the time you return for another set of britches.

[Marc1]

On 5/9/2018 at 1:11 AM, swedefiddle said:

Tin Pants are not Dress Pants ...

What a disappointment, I was going to wear them at the town hall ball ...

From your comments and other reviews, I think they will be a bit too hot for our climate. Will follow the suggestion of BDU's ... they make some real good one right here in Australia. And they cost half what the Filson do. 

 

[JHCC]

My all-time favorite pants are a pair of Belgian Army BDUs, probably from the Seventies. They're heavy, tough, comfortable, and built like a tank. They're not labelled with model numbers and specs, though, so the only way I could figure out that they're Belgian is from the one little label that says "Do Not Dry Clean" in French and Flemish.