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Barbara,

I have used one of the Petite Press irons. They have a pretty weak handle that prevents using much pressure to seal the seam, and they are low wattage, if I recall it is a 40 watt iron. It’s owner found it very slow to bring a seam up to temperature and seal. He gave up and got a model aircraft iron.

As others have noted, the 165 watt…[Read more]

I was at Fabricland the other day and did a double take when I saw a mini iron – looked like the widths of the packraft seams, already had the bottom perfectly flat, and is available in Canada.  Kinda wish I had this when I did my Skeena (I used an Aliexpress iron that I sanded down).  I have no idea if it works, but reports on it look pretty g…[Read more]

Very interesting! Thanks for this.

Hello, I am not a robot. Just registering a bit preemptively while I window shop for my first packraft. 🙂

I used a cheap hot air soldering station for three packrafts (Telkwa, 2P and UL). I think you will find it with different names, but it’s always something with “858D”. I bought this: https://www.amazon.de/Digital-Desoldering-Reparatur-Werkzeug-Elektrowerkzeuge/dp/B074N1FR9N

I dialed it to 270 °C and intensity of 3.5 for the normal…[Read more]

Mountain Equipment Co-op has several paddling jackets/pants combinations, as well as one-piece drysuits to choose from – that’s probably your best bet in Canada (though I haven’t used any of them). One has a spandex collar, which sounds intriguing.

I took a gamble on a no-name drysuit I found on Amazon a few years ago for a ridiculously cheap…[Read more]

Not sure about designs explicitly for packrafting. I have a kayak touring setup already. I have a Stohlquist EZ drysuit with a neoprene neck gasket and front zip. It works well for me and I don’t get leakage when inverted, but the neoprene neck does not fit as wide a range of neck sizes as a latex one. A friend using one had problems getting the…[Read more]

Wonderful!

First time on the water today, worked great! Now just need to wait till your lockdown end, hopefully end of April…

I’m not familiar with that product so I can’t recommend it. I recommend Seam Grip+WP, Aquaseal, or Aquasure (all made by Gear Aid).

Alright, I’ll look into that!

Just to clarify the terms: By “sealant” on the outside you mean something like this? https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/B000O71L6Q/ref=sr_1_8?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=aqua+seam+sealer&qid=1617367555&sr=8-8

Or just the regular Aquasure?

For anyone following: today I went for a paddle with a 5 inch PVC pipe laying down the floor center line like the alpaca gnu seat and I sat on top of my pack which was laid over the pipe. Test runs of that versus just sitting on the regular DIY seat with no pipe came out exactly the same! The pipe on the floor did improve tracking and reduce…[Read more]

Thanks! Beautiful work – I hope to see it in the wild when you’re able to travel north!

Yep, that sounds about right (see the “Note” about sealing different fabrics together on the Heat Sealing page). You don’t need to join 450 to 450 in any of my designs, so don’t worry about that. Cheers!