This sort of interchange going between Gabriel and Joe shows PaddleWise at its best, i.e. one person with a dilemma consulting with another who has worked on some possible solutions. Even if you are not _now_ facing a similar problem, reading about it is bound to get tucked away in your brain somewhere for retrieval at some point or it right now may get you thinking about using some of the materials being talked about. What I have grown to appreciat about Gabriel is how well he thinks "out of the box", i.e. he doesn't just look at things in a rut. His kayak storage chariot (I hesitate to term it any longer a _cart_) is an ingenius way of moving stored kayak right to the side of your car. It also gets around the perennial problem of how to support a plastic kayak in a way that it does not meld/melt around the supporting element such as rope or straps. I know people have gone to fairly wide webbing straps to overcome this but the canvas sling that Gabriel uses supports the plastic kayaks over almost 7 feet of their length; it is the way to go. I don't recall ever seeing anyone else come up with this solution. My gut tells me that in a lot of things around kayaks and kayaking we are not just really thinking "out of the box." For example, I am certain there have got to be better and easier ways to aright a tipped over boat than the ones we accept as dogma today. Instead we work on eskimo rolls and paddle float or assisted rescues. Has anyone really tried to think outside the box on this? I know there is that fellow who has a huge bag that inflates via a CO2 cartridge that eases emptying out and then can be used to get back in the boat. I reviewed it about four years ago in my newsletter (in an issue devoted to innovation and creativity) and the device was later reviewed in Sea Kayaker and is advertised there to. That is one approach but there have to be others too. The same with assembling a folding kayak. The tried n true method of making frame halves, inserting them into the skin and then doing elaborate extension of the halves through various apparati and methods in the middle. Nautiraid has rethought this asking why not make the boat frame entirely outside the skin where you can see and get at it all and have no resistance from the skin or frame tension. Then figure out a way to drop the finished frame into the skin and sealing it up. This basic method actually harkens back to an approach used in the early 20th Century to assemble some of the first folding kayaks. But the folding kayak field is ripe for change in materials as well as methods. Apologies for thinking out loud but this Gabriel/Joe exchange reminds me of how much more thinking is warranted about the way we do things around our kayaks. ralph Gabriel L Romeu wrote: > > Joe Brzoza wrote: > > > > > http://members.xoom.com/gabrielR/kayak/ > > > > >My canvas slings are about 80"long and 24" wide to give some beam > > >clearance as I used a door frame for the base. It would be relatively > > >simple to extend the poles up, span rope as an x pattern between the > > >posts, and drop one of those huge tarps from harbor freight over top. > > > > Now there's an idea! Maybe I'll add some larger diameter wheels in order to > > roll over uneven ground. > > > > What kind of place carries bulk canvas or heavy fishnet material? > > bicycle wheels may be a good alternative. I have trashpicked a few > bikes for restoration that would fufill that need. > I got my canvas from Utrecht, an art supply store here in the NE US. > Don't know if this is the cheapest place, but I had a lot of it from > mural projects. If you find large sized fishnet, let me know as I have > some projects in mind with that. > > regards, gabriel > -- > : : > Gabriel L Romeu : > http://studiofurniture.com furniture from the workshop : > http://members.xoom.com/gabrielR life as a tourist, daily > journal : > http://users.aol.com/romeugp paintings, photographs, etchings, objects -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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