4 Comments

  1. Stuart on December 24, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    I cannot find the Large-hole polyester mesh, 450 denier, 24 gauge, 4.5 oz per square yard for sale anywhere online. Could you tell me who you purchace your fabrif from please?

    thank you
    Stuart



  2. Steve on March 31, 2013 at 12:27 am

    Hello, Stuart, and sorry for the slow reply! I keep forgetting to check for WordPress comments…

    Anyway, we bought our mesh in large quantity from a wholesale provider, but I believe the same material is available from Sailrite ($12.95/yard, 96″ wide, gray/black/navy/white). The item number for the navy color is 100145. I have not bought this material there, but have done business with them on lots of other projects and they are great folks.

    Cheers,
    Steve



  3. Ray Sollman on April 14, 2014 at 8:27 pm

    Hi Steve,

    I’ve been searching for some type of safe stands for some time now, and I purchased a pair of highly rated kayak stands from Amazon. Now even though I have not taken them out of the box, they seem far less functional (and safe) than all of the PVC pipe designs I now see.

    (link below for the Amazon.com stands)
    http://www.suspenzkayakstorage.com/universal_portable_storage_stands

    Tonight I found your web site with the sling mesh material, which looks to be far superior than any commercial or home-brew design. I would really like to try your mesh product on my first attempt of PVC stands, but I am unsure of how to stitch the mesh or what size the slings should be.

    I have two new 2014 Hobie Revolution 13 kayaks, which I am trying to protect. Would anyone have a clue on how big the mesh sling should be? Also, I was thinking of using 1 1/2 Sch-40 PVC pipe since most designs use that size and these kayaks are heavy (70+ lbs.). I could just build the PVC frames, and use nylon straps to determine the size of mesh needed. Do you think a local upholstery shop could sew this mesh for me?

    Sorry for all the questions, and many thanks for giving us then chance to make a very high quality pair of stands.

    Best regards,
    Ray



  4. Steve on April 16, 2014 at 5:23 pm

    Hi Ray, and thanks for the kind words!

    I’m sure an upholstery shop could do it, and I like the larger PVC pipe for the heavy boats. One thing I haven’t tried, but might work at least experimentally, is making loops out of wide tubular webbing with slide-release buckles. These will NOT conform to the hull nearly as well as the mesh, but could be adjusted to carry equal load. The main point of caution there is to not do this if they are being stored in really hot conditions… I have not seen it happen with straps, but less-friendly things like pipe will cause a deformation of the rotomolded plastic over time. This can be fixed with judicious heat, but it’s a pain.

    Still, it will get your boats off the ground in the near term, and give you some data on the sling length if you want to roll your own. You can empirically determine stretch. Note that wider boats may end up resting on the tops of the X-stand (hence the trick with the split pipe insulation), but we have found that this can generally be avoided by moving the stands closer to the ends of the boat than may seem intuitively correct.

    Cheers, and I look forward to hearing your results!
    -Steve



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