Thanks for the feedback guys! No worries at all re. the write-up. I've gotten a lot out of this forum, so I'm glad to be able to contribute back in my small way...
Nuts wrote:Have you tried some practice seams with steam or other heat see if there's a way to undo the seams? ( I doubt it too).
Nah haven't tried steam on it yet, Nuts. Good thought though - I'll give it a whirl on the weekend and get back to you. Small wrinkles I have been able to get rid of by spreading the fabric with my fingers and ironing them concurrently. To be honest, I've been trying hard not to make mistakes in the first place though because they are time consuming and a headache to fix (i.e. that wrinkle on the underneath side of the raft).
andrewa wrote:Whomever asked about the seam in the floor, waterproof mess is less of an issue with this, coz most water comes in over the top, in my experience. So, the extension of this DIY project is a DIY spray deck.
A
Thanks Andrew, this is interesting. Now you come to say it, I do get quite a bit of water in my kayak just from standard paddling. A spray deck is definitely something I will give thought to down the track. I take it your spray deck is permanently attached to your raft?
undercling-mike wrote:You've got me keen to give it a try myself at some point!
Mike - definitely worth trying if you're moderately handy (which you obviously are from your quilts!) or willing to have a crack! There's been quite a bit of time go into this one but I think that's all part of the fun, right?
On the plus side, I reckon my next one will be a breeze to make and it's always nice to know how your gear is made for the inevitable repair jobs which will come in the future.
This next installment will cover how I made my inflation bag. For newcomers, I would say that this is a great introductory project to hone your skills on before getting into the more complicated stuff. So here it is!
I started out by (yep, you guessed it!) making another template. I couldn't work out what size these usually are, so I just took a guess on what "looked right". My bag is 58.5 cm x 97 cm and weighs about 110 g. Given the weight of the raft itself, this inflation bag does weigh a bit and I probably could have cut it down by about 1/3 in size...However, I'm not overly fussed about weight and the extra size of the bag will make inflation easier I'm sure. I like the width of this bag. I think it's a good balance between ease of handling and letting enough air in.
Here are my two pieces cut-out. You'll notice I tapered the bottom of the bag - I saw this on a couple of other bags and thought it would help guide air to the hole at the bottom.
Again this was all pretty impromptu stuff, but I thought it would be handy if the bag had handles!
I wanted the bag to be easy to open up and roll like a normal dry sack. So I ended up cutting some 2.5 cm strips of plastic out of a milk bottle to do the job. They are approximately 44 cm long (and admittedly, could probably be cut down a bit to save weight).
The ends of each strip were pretty sharp so I trimmed them back to reduce abrasion against the fabric.
I marked a line on the inside of each piece, about 9 cm from the top. I folded the top over, matched it up with this line and did a straight-line weld along the length of the fabric. This created a sleeve for each handle.
I then put the handle into the sleeve and welded up to it, as shown in the next image. In hindsight, I probably should have aquasealed the handle onto the fabric. You can move the handle slightly inside and I think over time this will cause the weld to peel (especially during the roll-top action). However, this is not a deal breaker as I can always cut the fabric and inject some aquaseal in there (/trim back the handle length) if required.
Next photo shows the two handles installed. You will notice that the handle on the left looks considerably more wonky than the one on the right! It wasn't until I'd enclosed both handles that I started thinking about the handle fixing idea. I'm not sure why I didn't trial this idea first, but I tried clothes ironing the handle in the hope that TPU surface and plastic strip below might form a bond. Pretty foolish actually...and as you can see that idea stopped where it started!
[In short, no bond was formed and it contorted my handle!]
After installing the handles it was time to start welding the two pieces together. I cut back some of the folded over fabric at the edges to expose a TPU coating I could weld my bonding strip to.
My first weld was from the inside to ensure that I created an aesthetically pleasing bond against the already folded over fabric. I wasn't too concerned about what the bond looked like from the outside in terms of gaps, because I'd left an extra tag of fabric to eventually aquaseal over it. This tag would also help reinforce the beginning of the seam which would likely experience additional stresses.
I then got the riding helmet out and bonded the two pieces as if they were a curved seam (welding over the helmet seems quite natural so I've been doing it in preference to welding on a flat surface. It also helps to negate any minor curves/waves that might be found along the edge of a piece of fabric).