: No. I haven't needed float bags in my canoe. The cheapest
: commercial roll-top dry bags work fine to keep my gear dry on
: trips. You could try something like that for floatbags in a SOF,
: but they are not going to fit as well as ones which are tailored
: to size.

: In his book on canvas covered boats George Putz suggests using
: pieces of precoated scrap material for patches. he suggests
: using rubber cement as a contact cement. The boy Scout design
: for folding kayaks uses contact cement for holding the canvas
: and plywood parts together. They report success with these
: materials being in the water, and on trips for a week. That
: should be more than enough time to get off the water!

: As for wrapping the boat to get a size: That is a pretty
: conventional sewing idea. They make human-shaped sewing
: mannequins for fitting dresses and blouses, and the process with
: boats is much simpler, although we want something smaller than
: the form (the boat) which the fabric is wrapped around. So wrap
: it, and sew it smaller.

: A small leak is fine. why do you ned them to be totally air tight.
: These are not balloons. if they have a slow leak and lose a
: gallon of air in an hour then should you capsize you have an
: hour to bail that last gallon out of your boat. If a perfect
: floatbag would keep 100 liters of water out of the boat, and a
: leaky one only keeps 96 out, then the difference is trivial.

: Put them in a bit slack and they will still displace water which
: gets into the boat. Inflating them to any level of pressure
: could cause them to expand too much on a hot day.

: If you have the material then this could be a fast way to make
: them. If you don't have heat seal nylon you can get a
: heat-fusible material like heat 'n' bond at Walmart or any
: sewing store. Platt Monfort uses that stuff for attaching the
: polyester material to the wood on his Geodesic Airolite boat
: designs. Works fine for him. Again, you can seal the polyester
: with whatever you used to seal the boat's skin. see
: www.gaboats.com for info on this.

: Good luck with your floatbags.

: PGJ

Btw, Platt passed away several years ago, the company is still there, not the man.

Bill H.