Paddling tips, tricks, news and gear reviews from an Unsponsored point of view

Tag: Plastic

Prijon Cocaine

Prijon have just released their newest creeker. The Cocaine takes some of the features found in it’s previous creekers such as the Pure XL and Cali and have brought it right up to date to make it competitive against the newer designs that have hit the market in recent years.

Prijon Cocaine

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Paddle Pickup

Paddle Pickup – A 300km Kayaking expedition tackling plastic pollution

In 3 weeks, a group of women will come together to Kayak coast to coast from Bristol to London via 300km of waterways. Along the way they will be collecting plastic rubbish from the canals, carrying out research and raising awareness on the problem of plastic pollution.

Paddle Pickup

Bex Band

Paddle Pickup

Erin Bastian

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Pyranha Factory Tour

Late last year I had the opportunity to visit the Pyranha factory here in the UK.

Pyranha Factory Tour

I had never been to a plastic kayak/canoe manufacturing site before so I did not know what I should expect.

unsponsored-pyranha-factory-tour 390

The plastic used in the factory to create the kayaks arrives in powder format. For some reason I had always thought that the plastic would be in the form of chips or small pellets. The first misconception of the day was blown away.

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Silverbirch Covert OC1 In Production

The first mould of the new Silverbirch Covert OC1 has taken place. There are some really nice graphics integrated into this process.

Silverbirch Covert

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Welding – A Review

Over the last two weeks I have welded up a number of boats here at Unsponsored HQ. So I thought I would share some of the work carried out “Welding – A Review” if you like.

The first boat a Dagger Mamba was welded twice. Once on the nose which also included getting a huge dent out and again on the hull under the seat.

Kayak welding A Review

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Dagger Contour Outfitting – Seat

Over the course of the last few weeks I have welded up a Dagger Mamba (twice – two different splits). The last split was located in the centre of the kayak right underneath the seat.

To get a good weld both inside and out I removed the seat. Given the size of the unit I thought that it would be a fairly difficult exercise but it turned out to be very easy.

Dagger Contour Outfitting - Seat
Dagger Contour Outfitting

The back band was removed so that access was a little easier, then all bolts were removed. Four were located on the seat posts and the fifth on the central pillar/storage area. The seat was then lifted and twisted straight out.

I took a few images of the Dagger Contour outfitting along the way and thought a close up of the seat out of the boat may be of interest to some. So here they are!

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Liquidriot Duo Kayak – The Build

The Liquidriot Duo kayak seen in a previous post was photographed a few days ago. In the three days following the original post over 12k people have viewed it, which is quite simply incredible.

Liquidriot Duo Kayak(3)

The Duo was hand crafted by Newcastle Uni paddlers – Jacob Collings, Matt Rose, Catherine Sanderson, and Angus Mackay. The guys behind the kayak have kindly sent some images of their creation being put together.

Liquidriot Duo Kayak(7) Continue reading

Liquidriot Duo Kayak

Somethings shouldn’t work but they just do. How about creating a Duo kayak from a couple of damaged creek boats that you might have lying around? Sounds pretty good, a nice little weekend project.

The kayak below was spotted at the 2015 National Student Rodeo here in the UK.

Liquidriot Duo Kayak

Here’s some inspiration from the UK, the home of 19th century industrial dominance – the LiquidRiot Duo kayak.

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A Few Kayak Repairs

I spent lunch time today carrying out a few kayak repairs by welding up a couple of boats. The first was a 6 month old Pyranha Karnali which had been damaged after its pilot left it to run the Morriston River Race by itself. First impressions indicated that the nose of the boat has been turned up, however the hull shows no sign of deformation.

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Kayak Repair – An Alternative Approach

Welding kayaks isn’t that difficult once you get your eye in. However any boats made from cross linked plastic have additional issues as the the temperature difference between welding and blowing the plastic apart is a very narrow margin.

Quite often even the best welded repair will have some level of weakness and could fail. Some paddlers add wire mesh to strengthen the repair and I myself have found this to be very successful and almost bombproof depending on the location of the weld.

However there is an alternative that I have seen on a number of boats over the last few months. It looks rather industrial but seems to work really well. Below is a series of images from Nick Wright who used this alternative approach to repair a Jackson Kayak play boat.

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Kayak Repair – A Few Observations

Over the past few months I have repaired splits in the following boats:

Liquid Logic Stomper 90
Bliss Stick Huka x 2
Pyranha Karnali
Pyranha Burn L
Dagger Nomad 8.5
Bliss Stick Huka
Zet Raptor
Liquid Logic Jefe

It has been really interesting to see how the plastic responds to heat and the repair process I use. Out of all of them the Dagger and Liquid Logic have been the nicest plastic to work with. In addition the outfitting is easy to remove so access was super easy. Continue reading

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