Dry bags

Making Dry Bags

How to build your own ~ Kayak forum

Making lightweight waterproof bags ~ Joe Sacher

Making your own dry bags (PDF 20 KB) ~ Chuck Holst

Hot stuff dry bags ~ NSW Sea Kayaker magazine

A New Zealand version

From an idea by Dunedin kayakers

Dry bags usually have a flat bottom, something that is not easy to make as the bottom to sides join is hard to make water proof. There is actually no need to have a flat bottom and if the tube is simply flattened at the end and glued, some space may be lost for the advantage of simple construction. This is the method described below.

Buy a pair of PVC trousers from the big red building. Suggest XXXL size.

Cut the legs off from at the crotch, parallel to the waist band.

Glue the bottoms of the legs, about a 15 mm wide glue line.

Roll this over and glue the roll-over. This is the bottom of the dry bag.

Cut a 20 mm wide strip from the "shorts", long enough to go round the dry bag plus about another 10 mm.

This will be the stiffening and it will also hold the Fastex buckles. To make the roll-over seal better, the strip needs some more stiffening. This can be provided by having a strip of plastic under the PVC strip. A suitable stiffener can be made from a plastic milk bottle.

It will be noted that the diameter of such a bottle is less than the length of plastic required so make a dummy strip from a length of paper and wind it in a spiral round the bottle. Mark and cut. You might want to make the strip a bit wider than required, mark straight edges on the flattened strip and cut back to a straight edge. This strip is covered by the PVC strip and is fitted to one side. Where the PVC strip goes from one side of the bag to the other, a loop is formed which contains one part of the Fastex buckle on each side of the bag.

The PVC strip is glued about 20 mm down from the top edge of the bag.

If you can get PVC material similar to that used for PVC trousers and jackets you will not be limited to size or taper.