Home Forums DIY Packrafts Reinforcing Strips bulging

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  • #18963
    zachschiada
    Participant

    <p style=”text-align: left;”>Sorry for so many messages on here, but I’m a day before my on water test for my telkwa and I’m noticing that I have a very large bulge in my floor where 4R and 4L tubes are. Due to the air bulge on the opposite side at the reinforcement strips, I’m assuming that I need to further reinforce the strip with the floor, but I focused pretty heavily on this area. If I can’t fix this, would the only option be to heat and remove the reinforcement strips to replace with another with some sort of adhesive? Also, how normal is this bulge? I don’t have it anywhere else on my raft.Floor Bulge at 4R/L</p>

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    • #18971
      zachschiada
      Participant

      Name tagOk, I ended up doing something that really hurt to do. I performed surgery on my raft. I made an incision and accessed the tubes, welding them back to the floor. I then applied seam sealer to avoid them lifting up. Since I cut into my mostly finished raft, I added a name tag and phone number contact like I do in all my whitewater boats. If it’s holding air tomorrow I still hope to test this out on the water, but I’ll do a last check for leaks/problems first.Fixed tubes

      • This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by zachschiada.
      • #19005
        Matt (Admin)
        Keymaster

        Great solution! I hope the first float was a success.

        • #19007
          zachschiada
          Participant

          It was. Class 2 and nothing catastrophic. I did rip the hole that held my seat in place to the floor. Seat is fine, but I’ll need to rig something to hold it in place. Have a slow leak that I need to work on. I had added bail holes near the seat but need to add a lot more based on my water test. I posted one of my laps on the Facebook page. I’m no videographer but just put my phone in my pfd.

          • #19070
            Matt (Admin)
            Keymaster

            That looked like a fun paddle! I’m glad everything is coming together.

    • #18965
      zachschiada
      Participant

      Valve hole viewI see now. It’s the floor separating from the tube fabric. I’ll try flipping it over tonight and ironing from the bottom up with parchment paper.Valve view

      • This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by zachschiada.
      • This reply was modified 7 months, 1 week ago by zachschiada.
    • #18964
      Matt (Admin)
      Keymaster

      Hmm, that’s unusual… I’ve actually never seen that before. Could you send me some pictures from the inside of the cockpit, and maybe take one or two shots through the valve opening so I can see where tubes 4L and 4R are attached to the floor (if possible)? It does look like something might be separating there, but I can’t tell why. Can you see if the TPU is separating from the woven fabric, or if the TPU layers are coming apart like they weren’t fully welded? Just throwing out a hypothesis, if you focused on those areas a lot, maybe the excessive ironing broke the bond between the TPU and the woven fabric? If that’s the case, adding a line of stitching with a heavy-duty needle and thread might be the best fix, and/or gluing with something like Clifton LA 4123 Urethane Adhesive.

      If you’re using a pump to inflate it, be careful not to put much more pressure into the packraft than you can do by mouth, because that could be part of the problem.

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