: I was going to make some from Walmart clear vinyl, but have not
: ordered the glue yet. It looks very simple to make, but then,
: looking at the computer screen is a whole lot easier than doing
: the deed.

You cn probab;y get everything you need at Walmart. Look in their hardware area for a vinyl cement. I like VLP (I guess that is an initialism for Vinyl Liquid Plastic) but there are other brands which work just fine. For a couple of floatbags you can go with one tube of the stuff, and probably still have a little left over.

Here is another thought for you: make your float bags from the same material you made the kayak skin. Coat it with the same coating. If you have a sewing machine handy you can stitch up two float bags in under an hour, with nost of that time spent measuring to see how big you are going to make them. Here is a quick hint: Don't bother measuring. Just wrap your scrap fabric around the outside of your bow or stern. Where the fabric overlaps itself cut through both layers. Every foot or so mark some alignment markd acrossboth sides of the seam. Remove the fabric from the boat, line up those cut edges, and see that the alignment marks match. Sew the thing shut, staying about an inch inside the cut edges. That gives you a bag with just a small bit of clearance, which should fit snuggly inside your boat.

You can coat the fabric before you cut it, after you cut it, before you sew it, or after you sew it. Decide which way will work best for you. After the bags are sewn,turn then inside out so the seam is on the inside, then paint a final coat of your waterproofing material (varnish, rubber, whatever) over the seam area to seal the stitch holes.

Here is the real value to doing this: In the event of a serious tear when you are out on the water you can sacrifice one of the float bags to create patch material for your hull. If you carry a small bottle of contact cement and a towel you can repair a slit which is several feet long by drying it, then coating the area with contact cement/ The bottle has a brush inside it.
To make your patch paint a 5" stripe on your still inflated float bag. When the glue has dried, carefully cut a 3 inch strip (to serve as your patch) from the middle of that stripe of glue you applied. Set that down carefully, and you can press the glued edges of the float bag back together to give you a still functional floatbag--which is a bit narrower, but still holding air.

Oh, and then you can patch the boat with something that already matches the color of the hull. Makes for a durable patch which is as waterproof as anywhere else on the hull.

Just a thought.

PGJ