C-Forum

The "Coran Addison" system of rating referred to has actuallly been around a long time in the rock climbing community, where it works very well. In climbing, the difficulty of the moves is rated from 0 to (currently) 15, with an open end to accommodate ever more difficult climbs. The first number of...

Aside from being a reasonably good song from Radiohead... Polyethylene as a plastic is manufactured in a variety of densities, and two fundamentally different chemical forms. The density is typically described as low density, medium density, and high density. I think that virtually every boat is mad...

Truly good news if that 3M product works. I tried an expensive, specialized glue from Colorado that was "guaranteed" to work on polyethylene, needless to say my thigh braces came off in the middle of a drop.... Now I am not too keen on glueing. I have welded cross linked polyethylene, and I think on...

I have tried to find a good PE glue with no success. I have tried spray on, contact cement, and even a "special" PE glue from Colorado, very expensive, did not work for more than a few months. My conclusion is that glueing to PE is a losing battle. That said, here are a couple of alternatives. I hav...

I have a plastic welder also (Boston area) if it is more convenient. Despite a lot of rumors to the contrary, it is perfectly feasible to plastic weld either cross linked (the older style) or superlinear (the current fashionable plastic) polyethylene. As previously noted on this thread, it is very d...

The model is the Miniweld Model 5 Airless 5500HT, available from Brady's Tools (www.bradystools.com). As I noted, this is basically a specialized soldering iron, but it seems to work quite well. For high performance (i.e. rapid) plastic welding done on a commercial scale, most folks seem to use hot ...

I paddled the Snake River south of Jackson a few years ago. Rented a Dagger Encore open canoe from a shop in Jackson, very nice people, they may have had a C-1 for rent, I did not ask. The run is class 3ish at most, a few good play spots, two good surfing waves, depends on level, which is likely to ...

I definitely second the hip pad thought. I have a converted Wavesport Z, ordinary thigh straps, no toe blocks, 5-1/2 inch saddle, and the key to staying in are the hip pads. I made the pads by glueing together several pieces of minicell, then glueing the composite into the boat (you can also attach ...