Forum Replies Created
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Looking at the site you’ve linked to, he pretty much admits that the problems are down to poor workmanship and poor tools. The photo shows a seam that will not only leak but quite possibly tear apart under serious stress. The situation is much the same as with anything else you might make, be it tent, shed or packraft: you need to have the right tools for the job, to develop the skills to use those tools effectively, and have a system to monitor your own skills. Have all that in place and whatever you make will last you as long as anything from the big names. Possibly longer in many cases.
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Just received some of these new red inflation and deflation valves, and I’m curious as to how well the deflation valves hold. I originally got these for dump valves on the reserve air bags in the tubes, but am thinking now of adding them to the main seats in the rafts and my new sleeping mat (rather than just holding the inflation valve open). On the shop page it says they hold your weight standing on the test bag, but I’m wondering what happens if you give it a bit of abuse. If you “fall” or sit heavily, do they stay closed? I have an Exped deflation valve here, and it seems much harder to push the red one open with my finger than the Exped one, so I’m guessing that they probably will stand abuse.
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Re the leather iron from Aliexpress mentioned in Comments.
I’ve just used mine in earnest (though not on a boat, alas) and have to change my opinion. The shoe is a solid lump of alloy, yet after a few hours it bubbled! See the photo. It looked like a chrome plating with bubbles, but after taking it all apart it is actually solid. The bottom of the shoe is also bubbled and will need filing smooth if it’s ever to be used again.
Worse, the temperature knob moves every time the handle is gripped, so one minute it’s too cold and the next you’re looking at a burnt and melted lump of nylon. Removing the knob and using a screwdriver on the shaft and an infrared thermometer is one solution.
Worse yet, sometimes when pressing down the light will come on – pressing the other way will turn the light off. Suspiciously as though it’s bending and making unwanted contact somewhere.
After pulling it apart, you can see that one of the wires going into the heater element is bare – the sheathing stops just short of the element. The blue-sheathed wire is 2-core and will be the feedback. Putting a meter across the other two where they join the PCB gives a full 230v. Hmm. Granted that’s 230v into a bare wire into a ceramic core inside the metal heater in the metal shoe, but the blue cable is crimped at the entry point and who knows what’s faulty inside, out of sight.
I don’t think I’ll use this again.
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500den TPU Cordura from extremtextil
FYI: I have just made a test weld on this with a strip of Matt’s camo fabric, using the hot air gun, and can report that the result is perfect. The weld is very strong, and with no sign at all of heat damage to the fabric it can fairly be assumed to be the ’66’ variant. The TPU coating is thick and the cordura face is tough. Very happy to use this for the floor.
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@Andrew. Bruce has posted some excellent reports on irons and I would consider his opinion definitive. You might also want to consider hot air guns, though not the one I reported on some months ago – this is one of many cheaper tools that don’t regulate the temperature and should not be considered.
Of the three ranges that Steinell make, their professional range is aimed at people repairing car bodies and the like. They all regulate the temperature properly, are light and quiet with durable ceramic heaters, and one has a display allowing you to monitor both the temperature and air flow at any time.
These are only a third of the cost of a Leister or Seivert barrel-grip gun, and have nozzles for other jobs like thawing frozen pipes, soldering new pipes, stripping paint, lighting a BBQ, fixing your kids’ broken toys etc etc. So there are many ways to justify the cost.
I see two benefits to hot air: 1/ it heats the coating with only residual heat getting into the fabric, thus reducing heat stress. 2/ it heats the coating uniformly – where an iron may make patchy contact on curves or an uneven former and leave colder spots that may be poorly welded, hot air will be consistent over the whole target surface.
Just a thought.
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Thanks Bruce.
To my mind this is absolutely the right tool for any fabric that’s not UL, but it needs time to learn how to use it to the best advantage. I also have a little 700watt ‘solder re-work station’ thing which I tried once. Both temp and air-flow are easily controlled, but the thing is just a wimp, like using a candle when you need a search light. Blowing stuff around the work bench was a problem at first, but with a dozen clamps and little planks etc to clamp to, that problem went away.The temperature gauge gives you total control over the gun and the job in hand – you only know what you’re doing if you know what your tools are doing.
Yes, I’m very pleased with how the tie-downs turned out, and they only needed the simplest little jig to make the job quick and easy.
Cheers,
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Have you considered adding a spout to it, like the Exped Schnozzel Pump? The schnozzel comes out of the side, not the bottom, so you can rest the bag on the ground away from whatever is being inflated and just “fall” on it. After a hard day when you feel like collapsing rather than inflating your sleeping mat, being able to ‘collapse’ on the pump is brilliant!
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I’ve started using my Jingda “leather” iron again after all. Having ground and filed the bottom flat and the width down to 24mm, it really is quite good. The minimal temperature drift and massive heat retention is excellent. As for the shoe on mine bubbling, it has to be poor metallurgy. I have to assume that it’s made from recycled alloys, and they left impurities in. Different batches will have different levels of impurity.
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Aha – have just found a youtube video showing what you describe. So I guess this inner valve would also be ‘sticky and cling to itself’ as you mentioned before on your own gear. I’m dead keen on finding a replacement for zippers if possible, and was just thinking about making up a test rig of a bladder representing the hull with a ‘tube’ thing in the seam. It would look quite like the neoair inner tube, but 75 or so cm long and high enough to get say 5 rolls at 30mm each. And then velcroed down to the hull with a flap velcroed over the whole thing to tie both sides of the hull together. The cargo zips I have now are 72cm, but the one on my MRS raft always niggles at me – it’s too easily damaged and means that the raft is no longer field repairable.
I’ll postpone making this until you’ve tested yours, if that’s not too cheeky:) I now see that this inner valve seals by virtue of using pressure (rather than fighting it), and having one hanging down as you say could well be key.
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I made an air pillow once with a roll top, thinking that a dozen rolls ought to keep air in. It stayed up for a couple of hours but was always flat in the morning.
Thermarest have a new ‘speedvalve’ on one model Neoair. This looks like a roll top about 20cm wide. Towards the end of the video they say ‘tuck the black inner valve all the way inside’ before rolling it 7 times to close. The camera doesn’t show this ‘inner valve’. Has anyone seen one? It may be key to keeping it airtight.
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Check posts 2248, 2771, and 2901 for fabrics from Seattle and Rockywoods. There are many other posts here from people who have tried other fabrics and concluded that it was a mistake. Currently Matt is the only supplier offering the correct fabric to the public. I speak as someone who bought the wrong stuff in the past and will not again – shipping delays and costs will soon be forgotten while your project, built well or badly, will stay with you.
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For weight in the bow, I’m thinking that when the boat needs to be manoeuvrable in moving water then the pack should sit behind with me jammed back against it; but for better tracking on flat lakes and the like then the pack would be up ahead, sitting on the floor and leaning on the bow; when the gear needs to be certain of keeping dry then it would go in the hold with the seat maybe moved forward a bit; and with a passenger then all the gear (except lunch) would go in the hold and along the tubes as needed for balance. The shape and size should make the boat quite versatile.
The angle between the tubes in the photo is not quite right, partly because too much air is escaping through the stitching and the hot air gun is barely keeping enough pressure in it.
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I see it as a valuable addition to the toolbox that will be used on other jobs too. I have the 1500W version but there is a 1080W version on ebay for the price of a Clover iron, though you need to get the 20mm nozzle separately. Anyone who’s done any gas welding will find this a natural tool to use, though you need to develop some specific skills to get good results.
On the positive side the heat is consistent – unlike an iron which loses heat as you work. Though you have to be careful to keep the speed consistent – if you inadvertently pause while fiddling with the roller it can burn holes clean through the nylon. The air flow is very focused and stays at the nozzle width until it hits something. I flattened the 7mm round nozzle to about 10mm wide, and that proves useful for welding baffles onto a seat cushion. All the heat goes into the tpu coating and almost nothing is transferred to the other side of the nylon, so you could easily weld fabric coated on both sides. Or weld one side without affecting glue on the other side, and so on.
On the negative side it blows a large volume of air – think leaf blower – and anything not gaffer-taped down will blow away. The end of a seam tape will get twisted and welded to itself due to the air flow, so you need to extend the ends enough that you can hold them straight and then trim to size. The heating element looks very fragile, so it’s important to let it cool on fan only before switching off.
I’ve only practised with it so far, but when the new green fabric arrives I’ll make both boats together and try to make a video of the gun working.
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FYI: while the 70D is good and airtight (I made a sleeping mat out of it once), the 430D is not. The packcloth weave is encouragingly tough against scissors, but the coating is so thin that the edges fray. The weave shows through the coating. A quick welding test shows that the coating is not strong enough, and I cba making a seat cushion to test the airtightness considering that it fails the other tests. Not recommended.
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Perhaps, Matt, this would be a good time to add a note to your shop page about the risk of buying fabric from other sources that is not marked ‘nylon 66’, and a link to this thread (saying to read it all – it’s too easy to miss important bits in a long thread). Many of us have been caught by this issue now, and I’m sure that we would all regard such a note as helpful to your customers rather than just pushy.
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Correction: the original 70d tpu fabric I bought some years ago was from SeattleFabrics, not extremtextil. As others so rightly say, their customer service is diabolically bad, to the point where I expunged the transaction from my memory and assumed that I had bought it from ExtremTextil instead. Despite that I have some samples from them now. The 70d is 226gsm with a thick airtight coating, the 430d 260gsm with a thin coating that needs testing and the 30d 102gsm.
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If you’re thinking of buying this fabric Hiroshi, then the general consensus here is to not buy it. Extremtextil have some very heavy tpu coated nylon which they describe as ‘high tenacity’, but all the others are not, and the fabric melts at almost the same temperature as you need for welding. Andreas says he will buy Matt’s fabric next time, not the one you are looking at.
I had to abandon a sleeping mat project, after buying enough fabric to make two mats and cutting it all up ready, because it just melted.
Everyone who has tried this ‘low tenacity’ fabric says to not do it again. For my first boat I bought a kit off Matt, and for the second boat I will buy green fabric off Matt – we know that this fabric is good.
Please do not buy any fabric that is not ‘nylon 66’.
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