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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 finished my V3 raft about a week ago, and have been chasing down leaks! The build went pretty well,  I’m now much more curious about commercial welding techniques.  I did have some issues with the fabric contracting upon sealing, really only noticiable over the length of the two long red center tube sections. Once welded, the ends came up a…[Read more]

hi

just ordered the v3 kit and irons

Living in Calgary, Canada but originally from Australia.

I’m really looking forward to building this.

Great site Matt, I can finally get into packrafting!

cheers

Sean

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]

Question about zippers:

I just received my kits – all very exciting, like a kid on Christmas ‘n all that – but the zippers are proving a bit of a challenge. All five appear stuck and despite a fair amount of traction, to the point of where I’m afraid I’ll do damage, I can’t get any of them to budge.

They all look to be in good condition and have…[Read more]

Howdy

In answering my question..

I measured the temperature on the surface of the copper and found it was about 30 degrees C cooler than the reading from the other sensor.

So that bit of insulation is making a huge difference. In 3d printer land the sensors are often held on using silicone gasket sealant rated to 340 degrees. I think I will probably…[Read more]

<p style=”text-align: right;”>https://vimeo.com/241967462</p>
Video test .

Sold!

I’ve built a couple of 3D printers and throughout that process I’ve always bought a few spares for when things go up in smoke.

I had a spare control board and heater cartridges. So it was an easy job to mount the heater cartridge inside a piece of copper, along with a thermisistor and heat sink compound.

So I’ve managed to get a PID controlled…[Read more]