Homemade Kayak Leash

[fifis101]

This is a little trick I picked up on a kayaking forum the other day. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that have seen this before but I just thought I'd put together a little tutorial for the others who haven't.

Items You Will Need:

- Whipper snipper wire ($2 for 10m of 2mm diameter at you discount stores)

- 300mm length of 5-10mm dowel or rod

- Drill and drill bits

- Crimper and crimps

- Pliers or scissors

- Velcro

- Snap clip

- Pot of boiling water

First step is to get your piece of dowel or thin rod (I had an old piece of hollow fiberglass rod that I found at home) and drill a hole close to one end big enough to fit you whipper snipper wire.

Next, get your whipper snipper wire and measure out the length you want to use. I made my paddle leash using 3m and used 1.5m for some small leashes for securing other bits and pieces. This length will all depend on your rod diameter so it may take a bit of trial and error to get right.

Now thread about 10cm of the whipper snipper wire through the hole you made in the rod and start to wrap the wire around the rod as tightly as you can. If you secure the rods in a vice to do this it will make it much easier (sadly I don’t own a vice).

Whipper snipper wire shown is not very tight as it was hard to hold it tight and take a photo.

Continue wrapping the wire along the rod until you are left with the last 10cm. The next step is to drill a hole at this end of the coils. This can be done in two ways, you can mark the point of the last wrap and let the wire unwind and then drill the hole or if you’re a bit more confident, you can try and hold it tight and drill the hole straight away. Either way, once you have drilled your hole, thread the last 10cm through the second hole and pull as tight as you can. It should hold tight.

Now you are ready to drop it into the pot of boiling water. I left mine for about 10 minutes just to make sure but I’d say it would only need a few minutes. Once you’re happy with the amount of boiling time, remove the rod and quench it in cold water until cold. Once cold, remove the wire by pushing it back through the holes.

The wire will recoil a little bit but if it recoils a lot I’d say to rewind it and leave it for longer to boil.

Now it’s time to attach you clip and Velcro. This is done the same way you would crimp a trace for fishing. The crimps I had were ~20mm long, so I just cut them in half with a hack saw to the size shown in the photo.

Do this for both the snap clip and the Velcro strap to finish the leash.

I pre-made the Velcro strap before crimping it to the leash.

This is the first time I have done this so I am unsure on how long the coils will last before straightening out but like me, if you have all these things lying around the house, it didn't cost me a thing. Have fun.

[max pwr]

Very clever!

[poppers81]

I have done this myself, works a treat....