05-04-2013, 05:42 PM
I believe that the reason why I felt a bit unstable is that the seat is too thick. The current seat allows my featherweight ass to be three inches or more above the water which doesn't allow the "U" to do as much lifting and therefore stabilizing. I'm making a change on the seat for testing that will reduce the thickness from 6" across the pleats to 5". This in addition to welding the seat higher within the "U" should help distribute the load better.
Overall, this will raise the bottom of the seat up 1/2" and lower the top of the seat another 1/2".
The design may work as-is just fine with a normally stout person, but not so well with me. In reality the difference between 3" over water vs. 1" probably won't account for much as far as warmth and comfort are concerned so perhaps I tried too hard to be "high and dry".
The reason why the ODC and Outcast tubes feel more secure is that they have a top and bottom seam on the seat which makes a nice rigid box section. I only have the one seam which allows some torsion as a trade off to simplicity of manufacture and weight savings.
We'll see if the seat mod ameliorates the issue as I suspect it will.
BTW, I don't know what the upper end of the load rating will be, but I am planning on letting my 270 lb friend take a ride to see how she does.
_SHig
[signature]
Overall, this will raise the bottom of the seat up 1/2" and lower the top of the seat another 1/2".
The design may work as-is just fine with a normally stout person, but not so well with me. In reality the difference between 3" over water vs. 1" probably won't account for much as far as warmth and comfort are concerned so perhaps I tried too hard to be "high and dry".
The reason why the ODC and Outcast tubes feel more secure is that they have a top and bottom seam on the seat which makes a nice rigid box section. I only have the one seam which allows some torsion as a trade off to simplicity of manufacture and weight savings.
We'll see if the seat mod ameliorates the issue as I suspect it will.
BTW, I don't know what the upper end of the load rating will be, but I am planning on letting my 270 lb friend take a ride to see how she does.
_SHig
[signature]