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dry bag hatch


corbin james

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Just finshed skinning my first build, "Vardo", and have an "after the fact" hatch idea i would like to run by you all.  I built a small oval ring like a small coaming to fit inside the diameter of a dry bag I have.  thinking of cutting the drybag in half, inserting the wooden oval so aobut 5/8" is hanging down then folding the outside edge around to the inside where it would be mated to the kayaks fabric folded up and over the drybag edge then sewn to the ring same way as the coaming.....i dont see why it wouldnt work except for the extremely small radius of each end.  Might be very difficult to wrap and pin into place for sewing.  Ill post a pic of my freshly sewn vardo along with a pic of the "drybag hatch ring" laying on the deck....I'll slide the ring into the bag and take a pic of that too....I havn't cut the bag yet so its going to look pretty bulky but you'll get the idea....

Has anyone done this?  I will practice on a waste piece before cutting into the fabric to see if i can pull it off but I see some advantages of this method....

1. light weight

2. totally secure, there is no way this hatch lid could pop off or come undone.

3. It going to be extremely watertight

 

has anyone else done this?  Whats the smallest radius anyone has sewn to their skins?  i guess I'll find out.

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I like the oval hatch idea.  It always bothers me to see the center line interupted and a recessed hatch break up the lines of the boat.  I would want a flush or slightly raised cover of some kind though.  Even if not necessary it is the cosmetic thing.  I have always been a little OCD concerning boat cosmetics.

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i'll install it on a piece of scrap cloth first to see how its going to sew and look.  I'll post the pics . Yes, I couldnt bring myself to cut the top stringer even though i really like the way jeffs hatches look when they are done.  i also did not want to add the weight of a piece of plywood.......so this is my experiment.  if it sews up okay, the main hassle so far was building a mold and a ring of the perfect thickness to fit inside the drybag.  took me two trys and its still a bit tight.  it was hard for me to measure the inside of a dry bag and then subtract the exact thickness of the coaming ring, then make the coaming ring to an exact thickness.... trial and error.

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Call me dense, but I had to read this more than once to follow what you had in mind (maybe I still don't).  

 

My big concern is adding it after you have the boat skinned. With the skin tight, how do you propose to sew in the ring? I don't see how you can pull up enough skin to sew the ring in place. If you had done that as you skinned I could see it. You might can but I am not so sure. I have seen something similar to this done somewhere but I did not like the way it looked so never tried it. 

 

Dry bags are not always water tight. Also, sewn coaming can be problematic to seal sometimes so there is a chance it could leak around your sewn in ring. But if you are not rolling it's probably not a big issue. 

 

If you know how to roll or are interested I would stick with hatches. If not, it will probably work just fine.

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  • 3 weeks later...

my test on scrap fabric was semi-succesful with tight fabric. would have worked but wasnt clean enough for my liking so i am going to wait and try this on my next project, not this one. from my experiment i believe this technique should work well if the drybag and ring are positioned and sewn into place bEFORE the initial running stitch is done.

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