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<p style=”text-align: left;”>Sorry for so many messages on here, but I’m a day before my on water test for my telkwa and I’m noticing that I have a very large bulge in my floor where 4R and 4L tubes are. Due to the air bulge on the opposite side at the reinforcement strips, I’m assuming that I need to further reinforce the strip with the floor, but I focused pretty heavily on this area. If I can’t fix this, would the only option be to heat and remove the reinforcement strips to replace with another with some sort of adhesive? Also, how normal is this bulge? I don’t have it anywhere else on my raft.
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Ok, I ended up doing something that really hurt to do. I performed surgery on my raft. I made an incision and accessed the tubes, welding them back to the floor. I then applied seam sealer to avoid them lifting up. Since I cut into my mostly finished raft, I added a name tag and phone number contact like I do in all my whitewater boats. If it’s holding air tomorrow I still hope to test this out on the water, but I’ll do a last check for leaks/problems first.
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It was. Class 2 and nothing catastrophic. I did rip the hole that held my seat in place to the floor. Seat is fine, but I’ll need to rig something to hold it in place. Have a slow leak that I need to work on. I had added bail holes near the seat but need to add a lot more based on my water test. I posted one of my laps on the Facebook page. I’m no videographer but just put my phone in my pfd.
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Hmm, that’s unusual… I’ve actually never seen that before. Could you send me some pictures from the inside of the cockpit, and maybe take one or two shots through the valve opening so I can see where tubes 4L and 4R are attached to the floor (if possible)? It does look like something might be separating there, but I can’t tell why. Can you see if the TPU is separating from the woven fabric, or if the TPU layers are coming apart like they weren’t fully welded? Just throwing out a hypothesis, if you focused on those areas a lot, maybe the excessive ironing broke the bond between the TPU and the woven fabric? If that’s the case, adding a line of stitching with a heavy-duty needle and thread might be the best fix, and/or gluing with something like Clifton LA 4123 Urethane Adhesive.
If you’re using a pump to inflate it, be careful not to put much more pressure into the packraft than you can do by mouth, because that could be part of the problem.
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