I recently went through a pile of my grandpa's old fishing and camping stuff and saved some gear from the garbage can. In the process I found two old tents. The first is a Cabelas hexagon shaped double wall tent and the second is a blue single wall scout style tent. They are both old, he bought a lot of his stuff in the mid 70's to early 80's. They've been sitting in a basement for at least a 25 years.

The Cabelas tent appears to be ripstop nylon, but the coating on the inside of the material is tacky to the touch. It isn't delaminating anywhere I can see. The blue tent looks more like polyester (not positive though) and it looks and feels like it's in great shape. I set them both up in the yard over the weekend to test them out and sure enough, the material on the Cabelas tent wetted out and let water through with both dew as well as rain. The blue tent had some condensation, but seemed to hold up well.

I would like to salvage the green tent if I can, out of nostalgia as well as just to have a couple extra tents on hand. I've searched here and it looks like the nikwax tent and gear solarproof would work well. I will probably go that route, but will that alone be enough? Do I need to try and strip off the old coating and brush on as well? I've got a couple good tents I'll use for trips, so these would likely be used for occasional close weekend trips as an extra tent or loaner.

I just seam sealed an old tent that didn't leak but the seams had never been done. I found a recipe online for making your own seam sealer. It worked very well and I think you could possibly thin it a bit more and paint it onto the entire fly. I am no expert and would search the DIY forum as I am sure someone, anyone, has more experience with this than me. Good luck and let us know how it turns out if you find a solution.