Activity

Finished, mainly.

I built the two person packraft.  I prefer the canoeing, followed by rowing, with kayaking coming in third.  So I wanted a packraft I could could canoe paddle or row.  So I also made a rowing frame from old yagi antenna elements I had laying around, some conduit fittings and some UHMW plastic for the oar yokes.  I gave it the…[Read more]

Hi Cate, someone else did the same thing and was able to fix it by cutting off a bit of the valve stem (or the flange) and using the iron to melt it like hot glue and press it into the hole (kind of like welding metal). Give that a try first.

Thanks for the response Matt.

I am trying to use a kayak spray skirt and its fairly tight. Can you tell me what kind of tubing you use in your kit? I’d love to order more because what I have got damaged from trying to force it with my spray skirt.

I’ll also try to make it work with aluminum tent poles as well because the section I’m running is…[Read more]

Hi pnwdavis,

I’m not sure why that’s happened – would you mind sending me a sample of fabric from that old seat? I’ll email you with the shipping info.

The packraft itself is made with the TPU on the outside, so it will be easy to see if the same thing happens there. If water is somehow part of the cause, that won’t happen to the tube fabric, as…[Read more]

OK, so I pulled attachment points and will redo them in the correct orientation.  I cut the old seat up to inspect, and found about 2 dozen points that the TPU and Nylon bond has given up– they feel like little blisters.  They are all over the fabric, and a few of them correspond to small leaks that developed through the fabric.  They seem to be…[Read more]

Matt, I’m sorry, you’re right on the forces.

Looking at the photos again, I tied the loops backwards from my original plan, which definitely put all the ‘pinching’ force on the tie in points as opposed to the seat back as I originally intended, and that explains the delamination perpendicular to the direction of pull– the tie down is getting…[Read more]

Thanks for the reply, Matt. The the photo of the old seat is along the bottom, back right edge. It peeled back about halfway to the reinforcing strips on its own. The fraying didn’t start happening until the fabric pulled away from the TPU.

As for the attachment points along the side they too peel with little force.  The ones shownare just…[Read more]

Hmm, I have a lot more than 21 days on one of my boats made from that same batch of fabric, but I haven’t seen anything that bad – just a tiny bit of fraying along the edges.

I can’t really tell what part of your old blue seat that is in the picture – is that where you peeled it by hand, or did it actually come apart that much from normal use?…[Read more]

Hahaha!

any chance of getting a Girard/back 15 seconds etc on the videos?

I keep backing up a video to see a detail in the time lapse and I keep going back way too far, over and over again.

Almost done with tube 2R today.

You can use the arrow keys to skip forward and back, and if you click on the gear icon you can slow down the video too.

Any chance of putting a skip forward/back on the videos? I have to back up over and over to look at a detail that goes by quick with time lapse and a 15 sec back button would sure help.

Attaching tube 2 to 3 today……if all goes well!

Nope… I just checked from two different devices and everything seems to be working fine.

The only common issue is people trying to use the wrong password, or the right password and the wrong instructions – make sure you’re on the right page for your kit and you’re using the password that’s in the letter that came with your kit.

There are a…[Read more]

Hi Matt

I am having quite a few issues unable to watch the videos and logging in.
Is this a common issue?

Yep, I’ve been testing seats made entirely of 115 GSM fabric and haven’t had a problem yet (except where I did a poor heat sealing job on one!).

Right on… I guess your only mistake was thinking that you had made a mistake 🙂