A couple people have posted some great tie-down designs in the forum since I made my original tie-down video, and after several attempts at combining their ideas with my no-sewing policy, the following tie-down design was born.
(I don’t have anything against sewing – it’s great if you have the skills and tools – I just want the DIY Packraft designs to be as accessible to as many people as possible.)
I got a bit carried away when I was doing the drawings this evening; usually I just bang out a simple plan view, add some dimensions, and leave it at that. Sometimes when I’m listening to a good podcast I zone out and you get images like this one in puke yellow:
That would have been a lot quicker to make with a camera – I literally have a tie-down sitting on my desk in front of me and a camera in my pocket… so here’s another drawing:
The exploded view above shows:
- A 25 mm (1″) plastic D-ring.
- A circle of 210D heat sealable fabric, TPU side down. This holds everything together and attaches to the packraft’s tube fabric by heat sealing.
- A vaguely H-shaped piece of 420D or 1000D fabric with TPU on both sides. This reinforces the tie-down, making it much stronger. It’s cut from a 50 mm (2″) circle of fabric.
- A strip of black fabric, which is inserted through the D-ring, folded in half, and then slid through the slots in the two layers of fabric above.
- A circle of 210D fabric, TPU side up, completes the sandwich.
When all the pieces are heat sealed together, it creates a very strong tie-down that can be pulled in all directions without tearing, and it only weighs about 5 grams.
The plastic D-rings are surprisingly strong, but you can use metal if you want. Steel will rust though and it’s relatively heavy, and titanium D-rings tend to have sharp edges. I haven’t found any 1″ aluminum D-rings, but that could also be an option.
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