Nowadays, most gear is made of nylon.  Nylon melts.  Remember that.  If the edges of nylon fabric are cut with a heated instrument (as they should be), the edges of the fabric are melted, and so prevented from un-ravelling which can destroy the integrity of the object at hand. Sometimes the Mfr slips up.  BEWARE!

Whenever I buy a piece of gear, I inspect it carefully.  I expect to cut loose threads to 1/4" long and melt them with a cig lighter so they can't loosen.  I expect to turn the item inside-out and examine every seam.  It sometimes happens that I will have to melt/sear quite a lot of nylon so as to ensure the item will not soon self-destruct.  That happens a lot on USGI gear, which is generally well-made, but the final, finishing details are left off.  No biggie.  Being of simple, no-frills construction, most construction flaws on simply-made gear are easily spotted and thus easily corrected, one way or another.

Sometimes even high-end gear can prove to be a little less than desired.  Only way to know is to look and see.  Sometimes a factory omission/flaw is most easily corrected at home, sometimes the item has to be sent back.  You won't know unless you look.

At every square inch, and at every inch of seam.

The BEST MFRs begin by searing the fabric properly, and then stitching it together, like the seam on the side of an ALICE pack. The GI mfrs serge-stitch some parts of the final stitching, which is a way of substituting complicated, non-unravelling stitching for the more labor-intensive final searing process.  Cost-cutting, but usually OK.

Again, the BEST mfrs wrap some lightweight ribbon material around the exposed ends of the base fabric––sort of a "U" shaped deal, and stitch the ribbon down to (hopefully) prevent the (hopefully already-seared) base material from unravelling; even if abused over a long time.  This works out well as long as the base fabric was well-seared originally, and so long as the person stitching the "U" cover does not stitch too close to the original seam.  If too close, the seam is greatly weakened, and the item, if stressed greatly, will most likely fail  I like 1/4" between such stitching, but 1/8" will do.  

Not a big deal for lightly-stressed pouches and other stuff, but a defininite concern with packs.

Long story short, it is easy to make up for mfr shortcuts in simple gear, like GI stuff.  A simple inspection and searing of fabric/loose threads will add years to the item's utility, as long as no fundamental construction flaw is discovered.  If such is encountered, either exchange the item, or repair/discard as appropriate.

With higher-end gear, the short-cuts (if any) of the Mfr may not be so readily apparent.  In such cases, and particularly with items intended to be used in high-stress applications, the reputation of the Mfr, over a reasonable period of time, may be your only insurance policy.  I'd still inspect every inch of stitching.  YMMV.

Oh, and for those impossible-to-reach spots, if you have to do some melting, one of those long-nosed BBQ grill lighters will do the job..

Yep, mushrooming the ends makes it difficult for the threads to pull through and un-stitch.

You bring out a good point which I did not discuss adequately.

With regards to the very cheapest gear––and I know nobody here has EVER made that mistake , there is not much to be done with it.  All the inspection, cleanup/searing, and re-stitching needed will not compensate for poor dimensional control, inferior materials, etc..

OTOH, on the very best gear, the mfr avoids some of the pitfalls altogether, and pays QC people to deal with any minor problems that might slip through the construction phase.  IOW, you should still inspect every inch of the item, but expect to find few flaws.  You'll always find a few, minor problems, but seldom anything demanding a return.  You never can tell, though, even the best mfrs let one slip through every now and then, so inspect the entire item and be sure.  Ronald Reagan once said, "Trust, but Verify", and that applies to any bought item, as well as to Soviet nukes.

All of the above said, there is a sweet spot in gear where the materials, construction, and dimensional control are OK, but mebbe the mfr did not want to incur the extra cost of final finishing.  One example is GI gear.  It is made to pretty rigid specs, and inspected as well.  final finishing seems to not play much of a role with most inspectors as far as I can tell.  

Likewise, some decently-made and reasonably-priced gear can greatly benefit from the user/buyer closely inspecting each item, and his taking corrective actionbefore problems develop.  Again, this process involves close inspection, and flaws on such gear can be expected to happen much more often than on high-end gear, or even most GI gear.  The inspection will indicate whether return/refund time has happened, of if the user can fix things on his own.

Thanks for bringing this up.  I should have included it originally.

On anything but the best middling and top tier gear, lose threads are common.  


If the original mfr has taped the edges/seams, then we agree that any further searing of fabric is not needed.  If the mfr has left some edges of fabric exposed, then making sure same is seared is worthwhile.


I have seen various good quality fabrics de-laminate from the water-proofing coating, so I would not trust the coating, by itself, to maintain the fabric's integrity.  When in doubt, melt the edges of the fabric.  What do you have to lose?


No argument, but searing the edges of the (presumably) exposed fabric will help avoid, and possibly eliminate gear failure, if done at the outset.


I'm not sure what you mean.  I've seen some mfrs say that the materials are US-made, but the gear is made with foreign labor.


Your comments are intelligent, pertinent, and informative.  I will bet that if we sat down to a discussion we would rise with very few disagreements.

You're the first mil-person who has said that they took an active interest in doing this,  I wonder if your troops, even if the reasons were explained to them, didn't consider this some sort of chicken sh(t make work.

We both know it isn't, not to mention that their gear looks just a little bit better on inspection...