Westfalia travel, wrenching and general thoughts.

Lucky me.

Some sun showed up today. Managed to get the last row of staples in on my new canvas just before the "spitting" of rain turned into actual rain.

Things are lining up well. Canvas bottom looks and feels like it will fit nicely under the strips and make for a fairly taught tent. But..... the front of the canvas was a bit long. Could be the way I did things? Started at the middle of each long part then worked toward front then rear corners. The forward corner seams matched very closely to the marks I made from the old but tight canvas but the front was long. I tucked a bit at each forward corner but there may be a wrinkle or two. Not happy with that but maybe installation of bottom strips will sort things out.

Tip: if it's cold out, heat the vinyl strips. Bentley mentions heating them in warm or hot water prior to install. The weather was warm but when it got colder, staples started bending. Judicious use of my heat gun on each strip as I went along made an enormous difference. It might be easy to melt them so.... Bent staples is a major PITA. Not only do you have to remove them, if they poked into the wrong part of fabric, well, not cool. There is one tiny spot that may need a spot of fabric glue. We'll see.

Tip: YMMV! As per the previous install, I tacked the fabric to wood as I worked along with the strips. Like I'd tack ahead about 1' then do the strip, etc. Since I had marked where the old fabric hem was, I lined new hem to that. (I had carefully measured old against new and they are nearly identical). After a fashion, I started putting my tacks in horizontally along the black hem which is thicker. My thinking being that when the tent came to rest before strip install, there would be less chance of it ripping as opposed to it pulling on a vertical staple.

Will add wider staples before installing the bottom strip, but so far so good it seems. Should turn out ok.