Forum Replies Created
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Haha – sounds like fun!
Thanks for the tip about the 3M 5200 – I picked some up and I’m testing it now. I couldn’t find the quick-cure version locally, so it’ll be a few days before I can really pull on it. It seems like it might be a good product for coating the inside of the seams during construction to prevent those annoying pinhole leaks that are hard to track down.
Looks great, Steven!
I have so many half-finished projects, I know what that’s like, so good for you for plugging away at it and getting it done. Thanks for posting!
Hi Alex – don’t panic! This is fixable.
It doesn’t look too far off and I think you’ll be alright. If worse comes to worst, send me an email through the Contact page and I’ll give you my phone number so I can help you out. I’m off to dinner now, but briefly, here’s what I propose:
Position 4R so it lines up with the floor slit and 5R, and trim the overlap between 3R and 4R as you suggested.
Instead of matching 2R to the corner on the floor, match it to the position of 3R and accommodate the difference by fudging the position of 1R and 1L as necessary. As long as they line up with each other, don’t worry too much about the marks on the floor.
You may end up with a few extra wrinkles in the tubes, but honestly I don’t think it’s going to end up being a big deal.
Cheers!
Matt
Sounds good. I think you’ll find that a properly welded seam is stronger than the fabric panels, so sewing the seams would be redundant. You can see this demonstrated in my original fabric comparison video, where I show how the fabric tears before the welds give out. Cheers
Hi Conrad, unfortunately there’s no simple way for me to add an allowance to the pieces, but if you want I could make a kit with the lines drawn in pen instead of cutting them out, and then you could add an allowance yourself. It might be time-consuming for you though.
Hi Pham,
I’ve looked into various welding techniques a bit, but not really in regards to strength of bond. Heat sealing creates a bond of more than adequate strength for the way I design things – when reinforced properly, the fabrics fail before the heat welds do – so I haven’t needed to explore other options.
For the typical DIYer, RF/HF/ultrasonic welding is well beyond their price point (~$600 for a “cheap” hand-held model direct from China to about $6000 and up). I think that unless you’re setting up a manufacturing business or have a bunch of money to spend on a fancy machines, heat sealing is the way to go. Even most outdoors gear manufacturers I know of use heat welding (inflatable boat manufacturers tend to use expensive foot-pedal operated heat welding machines).
If there’s an inexpensive handheld RF/HF/ultrasonic welder available somewhere, I’d love to hear about it, but I haven’t been able to find one.
Cheers!
I’m sticking this topic to the front page because it got buried – please post tips here instead of starting a new topic.
Hi Rodney – Bruce wrote a post partially about that here: https://www.diypackraft.com/forums/topic/heat-sealing-tools/#post-4265
Cheers
Thanks Naas, that’s good to know! It’s interesting that you have to clamp it. Do you think it would work on a flat surface if you pressed it with a roller or placed weights on top, or does it need to be clamped?
Hi Conrad – don’t worry, it’s just cosmetic. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll know how long you can heat it without melting through. In the meantime, just make sure you’ve got a non-stick surface underneath, such as parchment paper. Cheers!
Hi Pham,
Tim at http://www.cubenmaker.com is a great resource for information about Dyneema fabrics.
I think people usually use tape or sewing+tape to assemble Dyneema, and the problem with using it for inflatables is that the tape creeps over time under pressure (I’ve never tried it myself though).
Cheers!
Hi Joe,
It looks like you’ll need
- 1 m of 1000D
- 2 m of 210D for the tubes
- 3 m 210D for the inflatable floor insert (you could use less, but then you’d have to patch together multiple pieces for the top and bottom, which would be difficult to make airtight)
- At least four drain valves (front and back, left and right, placed near the seat locations – more valves if you want it to drain faster). You could wait to purchase valves after you’ve had a chance to paddle the packraft and determined what number of drain holes works for you. That’s correct about my reason for recommending the valves for the floor drains (they can be closed on calm water). I’ve seen this done in one other inflatable raft, but not in any manufactured packrafts yet.
I’m not sure what you mean by elongating and widening a seat kit to make the inflatable floor – the seat kit is just pre-cut fabric and a small valve, so you wouldn’t be able to use the fabric and the valve is too small for inflating a 100 x 18 x 7 inch volume (you’ll want a Boston valve for that).
For securing the inflatable floor to the packraft, check out the Tie Downs & Attachment Points page under the How-To menu. In the insert itself, you can seal tabs of 1000D between at the perimeter where the top and bottom pieces are sealed together to make strong areas that you can punch holes through. Alternatively, you could simply put straps over the insert from one side of the floor to the other. I would probably try to secure the insert along its entire length because any areas that aren’t secured will tend to bend and float up if the packraft fills with water, which would let much more water accumulate in the boat and slow the draining process.
Cheers!
