The Upholstery Forum

Hey, all, I would like to make a custom-fitted dry bag for my canoe out of PVC/vinyl coated polyester fabric. I know the commercial dry bags are supposedly "welded" so that the seams don't leak, even if the dry bag is submerged.

Does anyone know how they do this? I considered gluing together the seam allowances (on the inside of the bag) using my HH-66 vinyl contact cement, but I'm not sure that would work, since the fabric would still have a row of holes in it from the stitched seam. Do they just paint it over the seam? Or, alternately, do they "tape" the seam with some kind of thin vinyl material, and glue that on?

Thanks in advance for any clues.

It’s pretty specialized equipment, I have looked into it a bit for some stuff I do but the price is way out of my league

Rubber cement is what I was thinking of using.

Marine trimmers place double faced tape in their seams before sewing canvas tops. That will provide extra water proofing.

John

Thanks for the replies, fellas.

I actually tried using some of my handy dandy HH-66 vinyl cement to repair some old Viking watermen's boots I have yesterday. I used two coats of the cement and used it like contact cement -- It seems to almost "melt" the vinyl underneath and when you stick the stuff together, it's almost as if they fuse into one piece of plastic. I'm not sure you could peel the parts apart without tearing the whole mess to pieces....

So I'm thinking what I might try is to cover the seam after sewing with the HH-66 and then coat a strip of the vinyl material with the HH-66 and glue it on top of the seam...I suspect it will work real well.

I'll report back if and when I try it...I appreciate the replies.

B.

You can certainly use hh-66 to waterproof seams. The bond is so strong it will rip the material before delaminating.

Thank you, John.

B

@Blucher ,Interesting topic and one that makes me think a bit. I will be staying tuned!