homemade inflatable pillow

[Ryan Faulkner]

last night I made a 1.2oz inflatable pillow from an old pacific outdoor dry sack that I never used.

the fabric is similar to that found in inflatable sleeping pads, so it is heat sealable with an iron.

I also fooled around with another spare an figured out how to make tubes in it, so I am planning to buy a larger dry sack and make a air filled torso sleeping pad for less than 9oz. and if that is sucessful, I will buy some primaloft and make an insulated pad

[Richard Nisley]

Ryan (The Boy Genius),

I first thought “that boy could be a genius” when you deduced that the MSR Wind Pro could be made a good cold weather stove by inverting the canister.

Now with the adoption of Wxtex bags for custom functions via heat sealing I think, “that boy is a genius”. REI now has these dry bags discounted 25% from their normal list price.

I continue to look forward to reviewing your future posts.

Richard

[Jim Colten]

You can purchase heat sealable fabric … might provide for larger pieces at less cost than cannibalizing dry bags.

I’ll post info in the materials sourcing thread.

[Ryan Faulkner]

thanks Jim,

good source, but the bags are not that expensive and they come with a valve on them, good because I plan to make a torso sleeping pad and I dont know how else I could attach a valve, thanks though, I may be able to find a use for that heat sealable fabric, whenI dont need a valve :-)

Thanks Richard,

it was not me that found out that an inverted canister works in the winter, all I did was start the windpro modifacation idea instead of a coleman Xtreme. Others made lighter versions of the windpro, and it was Bill Fornshell who got me thinking in the first place. thanks though, I promise to in the future, make something to live up to your “Genious” expectations, but I am probably not there yet.

thanks again

[Miguel Arboleda]

Great idea Ryan! I was looking at my own old WXTex 50 liter Pneumo Mech inflatable sack last summer and trying to see how I could make it into both a waterproof pack and inflatable mat at the same time. The problem with it was that I couldn’t get the top closure to stay sealed when I lay down on the sack. I guess the only way to make it work as a mat would be to forego the pack idea and do what you did and seal the top. Another problem was that the sack bulged so much in the middle that it was impossible to lie comfortably on top of it for long.

For a pillow I recently purchased a Cascade Designs Lite Seat (a tiny version of the Therm-A-Rest Pro mat) that I inflate, fold in half, and retain with a rubber band. It’s flat so my head doesn’t roll off. It’s insulated. I can also roll the seat into a rounded, toffee-roll shape. Plus I can use the pillow as its intended seat, as an extended addition to my BMW Torsolite pad, as an insertion in my G4 pack back panel, as a eyeglass or compact camera protector, as a Russian-style handwarmer, as a poor man’s temporary “helmet” under my hood, as a foot warmer at the end of my sleeping bag, as a (though not great) camera “bean bag”, as part of a splint for broken limbs, as a waterproof pack lid, or even as a chest protector against wild, boxing hermits!

Wow, just writing this gave me a new idea… an ultralight inflatable camera bag for my heavy Nikon D70s…

You’re inspiring Ryan.

[Ryan Faulkner]

What I plan to do for a pad is make tubes in the pad by sealing with the side of the iron every few inches verticaly, the sealed strips end a few inches before the end of the pad, so air can flow to the other end of the pad using only one valve.

it is kind of hard to explain, but it dose work, I had another 5L bag and tried it out, I stupidly threw it out because it was too small, but I would have posted pictures, I hope my pad will end up looking like the pacific outdoor pads.

[David Lewis]

That’s pretty cool Ryan. Very inventive.

If you’re interested in inflatable pillows though… you may also want to check out this thread

This is a pillow I made that is about 4 to 5 times the size (the same size as a full sized regular pillow) at the same weight (1.2 oz) with about the same collapsed size. I also believe it would by more comfortable since it’s dual chamber… so your head can nestle between the two chambers instead of rolling around on top. And at 50 cents a pop for those disposable pillows (assuming you can get a few people to share the cost of a box with you)… it’s practically free.

I know I could have just used the FlexAir pillow as is at 0.5 oz… but I’ve never felt comfortable on a single chamber air pillow. Sewing two together solves that problem beautifully. It’s pretty simple… and didn’t require much work or thought to come up with… but it works :-)

[David Lewis]

Good idea about the seams Ryan! That should make it more comfy. I actually tried that with a flexAir pillow too. I got it to work… with one middle seam… but I found that my head still rolled around a fair bit because the air can still flow from one “chamber” to the other. That’s when I decided to sew to together… so I’d have two completely independent chambers. However… using multiple seams as you propose would probably work much better than the single seam I tried with the flexAir. I wonder if it would make sense to stagger the open ends of the seams or something? To try and minimize air flow between the pseduo chambers?

[Ryan Faulkner]

here is an example of my idea.

I use the side of he iron

the seams do not go to the end

[Ryan Faulkner]

thanks David,

I actually dont use pillows, this is more of a practice for a pad I will make, but I will bring it some times.

[Jim Colten]

Now, if we can just source those valves …

[Robert Miller]

Thermarest offers replacement valves that I used for a similar project.

[Jin Lee Ng]

Hi there,

I am not at all knowledgeable in this area. Can someone please enlighten me as to what kind of material would be suitable to make similar air bags/pillow? I tried looking through some fabric websites but most just indicates whether they are waterproof or coated or breathable but none really states whether it is suitable to be used as an air inflation bag.

Please advice :) Thank you so much

[Jin Lee Ng]

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[Carla Ruigh]

This is an old thread that I came across, hopefully someone is still around with information that might help me. I'm interested in making an inflatable seat for my recumbent bicycle. If you don't know, a recumbent bicycle is the kind that you sit in a reclined position with your legs out in front instead of below you. So, the seat is kind of like a chair. Typically mesh fabric is used for the seat… I'll spare the details, but I'm on my second mesh seat and it isn't working out too well. I ended up sticking an air cushion from our kayak on it to sit on on top of the mesh temporarily while I work on another, and thought WOW, this is really comfortable. Got me wondering if I could actually make an inflated seat. I envision a series of tubes that are maybe an inch to 1.5inches in diameter. I see that the dry sacks come in a large enough size that I might be able to use the same trick of an iron edge to make several parallel seals to create the tubes. What I am wondering is if it is feasible to make such small tubes, and what does it do to the length of the sack. I found Pacific Outdoor dry sacks as big as 20"x40"… I need a net size of about 16"x 28-31" Wondering if by the time I make all the tubes if the 16 x 33 might end up about the right length. Also thought of buying some of the heat sealable fabric from SeattleFabrics, but the kite valves mentioned are really expensive. Ideally, I would make it with maybe 3 sections each with it's own valve, but it's like $45 for 3 valves. Wondering if the replacement thermarest valve would work which is only about $8… Any advice would be appreciated.

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