: I was wondering if I could use the extra 8oz Nylon from skinning to make a
: spray skirt. I'll seal it with seem sealer and recoat for water proofing
: tents. Will this work? Should I use different material?

: Thanks
: Richard

The recoat material I bought for doing a tent is a urethane product. It is probably just a little thinner than the urethane you probably used to coat your kayak. Try using the same sealer you used for the kayak skin on a few square feet of your scrap. If it is flexible when it has dried, then stick with it and save yourself a few bucks. If you think it is too stiff, then save those scraps for use as patches later on. You can attach them with rubber cement or contact cement when they are needed. Just carry a bottle of the appropriate glue with you in your repair kit.

If you sew the sprayskirt from uncoated material and then coat the entire spray skirt you won't need a seam sealer. The coating will seal the seams as well as any other part of the fabric. If you precoat the fabric and then sew it, the needle will poke fine holes through the coating. These would need to be sealed, and you could probably use the same material that you coated the fabric with.

half the battle of a do-it-yorself sewing project is cutting the fabric to the right sizes and shapes. Before cutting your nylon material use some newspaper, or cheap fabric (like muslin), to make a pattern, or template. Set this to a side, and if you later find that the nylon doesn't work out very well, you'll have the pattern available for quickly cutting a replacement from neoprene, or cordura as others have suggested.

If I was doing this, I'd sew a "tunnel" about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches wide to the outside around the top of the sparyskirt. To make this I'd use a strip of fabric about 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 inches wide, and 2 inches shorter than the circumference of the skirt where it would fit. I'd fold over 3/8th inches on all four edges. Then I'd sew down that folded part all around. That gives me neat edges. Finally, I'd topstitch this strip in place, keeping my stitching about 1/8th of an inch in from the edge, and leaving a gap in front of me. (you get a gap about 3 inches wide since the strip for the tunnel is shorter than the circumference of the sprayskirt.

Depending on the width of the tunnel I'd pull through a strip of 1 inch or 1 1/4 inch elastic. One end of this would be sewn down to the skirt in the middle of the gap. On top of that I would sew a button. The other end of the elastic would have 4 to 6 buttonholes sewn into it. I could then tighten or loosen the elastic by stretching it as much as necessary, and just fitting the nearest buttonhole over the sinle button. The loose end of the elastic could then be jammed into the open end of the tunnel.

Just some thoughts.

Good luck with your project.

PGJ