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I picked up a military surplus Valad Heat Sealing Iron off eBay like one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/VALAD-SEALING-IRON-HS3T-150W-120V-HEATING-PARTS-TOOL-HOT-ELECTRIC-MILITARY-USED-/172624490089?hash=item283138ae69:g:Sb0AAOSwoydWqAl8
I didn’t have much luck with the clover either, this is much heavier and seems to hold the heat better. My friend Evan found a similar industrial sealing iron for $75 used somewhere that has a heavy solid iron end that works well too. They are both just about the same width as our seams.
His came with a teflon type cover which I realized was the same as my Excalibur food dehydrator sheets so i cut a small piece form one of those. This helps the hot iron from sticking to the fabric, especially when I first start and the center of iron is hottest in one spot. This works pretty well now.
I’m interested to see how the hot air welders end up too!
A few more pics of our diy patches. They were a bit hard to get to seal right, you have to work both front and back well, but I think they look good and seem pretty strong. About 3.5 inches in diameter.
Thanks Lyn, that’s a good suggestion! I have an exped downmat and that sort of valve would work great. I think I’ll probably just end up getting a couple more things from Matt but I may keep an eye out at the used gear spots for a similar mattress for late projects.
Let’s see if these pics work from my phone. Here is Evan working on Step 1 of his ultralight:
And me hard at work on my blue raft. These are gonna need names I guess!
Thanks Matt! I am going to start putting my kit together tomorrow and I’m planning on doing an inflatable floor with it! Now I wish I had ordered an extra small valve though. Do you have any suggestions on US suppliers (or even what type of item to search for)? Or can you figure out a shipping break if I only order a small valve ($7 shipping for $4 valve)?
I’d like to do it self bailing (or one later) but I’ll see how it goes before I cut holes in the floor, hehehe.
Cheers,
StewartI like the self bailing floor idea, always made more sense to me in a raft like this than a spray skirt if it could be done for a reasonable weight. Also a seat with a back would be handy, often I just fold up a full length self inflating sleeping pad into a back rest/seat and that works ok in my current raft.
An inflation bag seems fairly simple once you figure out the boston valve portion? I use a garbage bag rubber banded to an adaptor currently (super light and replaceable) but I have a much different valve.
You can get multiple chambers via a zipper if you need to as well.
