Mini surf mat

A friend said he wanted to try a small surf mat so I whipped up a Tube Mat for him, its 15 in wide X 22 in long. The Tube mat design is so much easier to build than the traditional two piece, deck and hull technique. There is just one piece of material that forms the hull and the extra wide sides fold over and join on top to create the deck with just one straight weld or glue line. Using the Tube Mat concept eliminates the flaps around the perimeter of the mat and when you seal the ends you can choose to add a flap or not. If you do the two piece technique both sides have to align perfectly and when joined need to be connected without any stretch or inaccuracies. Makes me value the skills of the mat guys who still build them by hand ! Instead of a series of longitudinal I-beams Ive connected the deck and hull with vertical posts only an inch wide, the posts reduce the amount of material used inside the mat and so reduces the weight as well. It also creates a flatter mat when inflated because there are no valleys between the pontoons. Ive been able to take advantage of the 'post design' by designing a completely contoured shape where the front and back edge of the mat is tapered into a sliver and the rails are a different thickness to the middle of the mat. That's real customisation, a lot of work to initially figure out how to do it, but it would be easier next time round. I was going to give the Mini Mat a test ride but the surf was crap yesterday so I posted it off. Hopefully I'll hear how it goes.