Tom

Excellent!

This is an excellent tip! I had just assumed it would be too difficult to turn the tubes inside out so I didn’t even try it. I’ll give it a go on my next build though!

Thanks

In this case I would heat seal them in place as best as possible and add Aquaseal where necessary, and then reinforce the joint with an additional strip of fabric heat sealed on the outside of tube-floor joint.

Hi Jordan,

That sounds like an epic adventure, and that’s the type of trip packrafts are made for! I’d use single-person packrafts with airtight zippers for internal storage… However, I strongly urge you to gain lots of moving-water experience and take a swift-water rescue course before venturing out on a remote, multi-day river trip. There’s…[Read more]

In this case, I think I would heat seal them in place as best as possible and add Aquaseal where necessary, and then reinforce the joint with an additional strip of fabric heat sealed on the outside of the packraft (overlapping the joint between the tube and the floor). I’d add the reinforcing strip after the seam strips were in place joining the…[Read more]

Haha – sounds like fun!

Thanks for the tip about the 3M 5200 – I picked some up and I’m testing it now. I couldn’t find the quick-cure version locally, so it’ll be a few days before I can really pull on it. It seems like it might be a good product for coating the inside of the seams during construction to prevent those annoying pinhole leaks that…[Read more]

Looks great, Steven!

I have so many half-finished projects, I know what that’s like, so good for you for plugging away at it and getting it done. Thanks for posting!

Cool! Thanks for posting!

Awesome! How was it paddling with the three of you?

No worries 🙂

Hi Alex – don’t panic! This is fixable.

It doesn’t look too far off and I think you’ll be alright. If worse comes to worst, send me an email through the Contact page and I’ll give you my phone number so I can help you out. I’m off to dinner now, but briefly, here’s what I propose:

Position 4R so it lines up with the floor slit and 5R, and trim…[Read more]

Beautiful shot with the glacier in the background!

Sounds good. I think you’ll find that a properly welded seam is stronger than the fabric panels, so sewing the seams would be redundant. You can see this demonstrated in my original fabric comparison video, where I show how the fabric tears before the welds give out. Cheers

Hi Conrad, unfortunately there’s no simple way for me to add an allowance to the pieces, but if you want I could make a kit with the lines drawn in pen instead of cutting them out, and then you could add an allowance yourself. It might be time-consuming for you though.

Hi Pham,

I’ve looked into various welding techniques a bit, but not really in regards to strength of bond. Heat sealing creates a bond of more than adequate strength for the way I design things – when reinforced properly, the fabrics fail before the heat welds do – so I haven’t needed to explore other options.

For the typical DIYer,…[Read more]

I’m sticking this topic to the front page because it got buried – please post tips here instead of starting a new topic.