Tom

This is outstanding, Bruce! I never thought to file the iron to the shape I want.  If it’s alright with you, I’d like to post this under the How-To menu (with full credit to you) so it won’t get buried in the forum over time. Thanks for posting!

This is awesome!

If you have more pictures and details about your outfitting, I’d love to do a blog post about it because lots of people will be interested in the thigh straps and back band.

Great work, and thanks for posting!

Hi Logan,

Sorry for the delay – I’m currently traveling with limited access to the forum.

It’s not uncommon to have some misalignment but this amount seems like a lot. It looks like your piece 2 might be a bit wrinkled where it’s attached to the floor, which may account for it – make sure to keep the pieces flat and tight when sealing. Can you s…[Read more]

This is awesome – thanks for sharing!

Cool!

Hi Daniel, there are some whitewater pictures you might enjoy in the Pictures topic thread. I’m not much of a whitewater paddler yet myself, so I’ll leave the comments to others. Cheers!

Hi Sean – I know Bruce is in Alaska, but I’m not sure about your other questions. Cheers!

Hi Sean, I’ve posted pictures and a description of the form in Step 4.2 of the V3 instructions. Cheers!

Thanks for posting the links, Bruce – I was looking for one of these irons and couldn’t find it. It seems like it’s one of those designs that gets branded with different names, so it can be difficult to find if you’re just searching for it by the brand name. Hopefully the links will stay active!

Great shots, Patrick! The packraft looks good!

It’s certainly possible for the boat pressure to increase if the water is warmer than the air temperature, so give it a squeeze every so often when you’re paddling to make sure it’s not feeling over-stressed.

Thanks for mentioning the shrinkage issue – I’ll look into that. Cheers!

Hi Sean,

The stainless bowl should work – you might try wrapping some masking tape around it the “wrong way,” with the adhesive side facing out. The tape will hold the fabric in place as you work. That’s what I do on the wooden form I use, and it works well. If you have a jig saw or a band saw, you could make a wooden form yourself.

Cheers,

Matt

I merged this topic into the Help & Questions topic, but it messed with the order of posts… I’m trying to fix it, so far with no success 🙁

Hi Perrin,

Don’t worry – the zippers are very tight to begin with, but will loosen up over time. They’re especially difficult to open before they are mounted, because you have very little to grab on to. If you want to try them out before they are installed in the packraft, you can clamp one end of the mounting fabric in a padded vice or vice…[Read more]

Ah, yeah, I should have asked where the temperature sensor was, as there’s always a temperature gradient between the heating element and the surface of an iron. In theory, you could calibrate it to display the surface temperature, but it wouldn’t really be worth your time – once you find the correct temperature by trial and error, you can just…[Read more]

Oh, and the fabric melts at around 240 C, but you shouldn’t need to get anywhere close to that hot. Your DIY iron sounds cool! If you’re finding it takes too long to seal the wider welds, it might be worth adding an inexpensive model airplane sealing iron to your quiver – the large foot makes quick work of the tube-to-floor welds.