Hello Everyone! I’m new to Paddling.com, but have been paddling most of my life… Boy Scouts and such. I recently bought my own canoe, it’s previously owned and seemingly was dropped or something, which bent upward the bar that runs along the keel. How does one go about repairing such?
The photo I attached is for reference only.
If you could get the bar (the keelson) out to straighten it, that would be easiest but I assume you can’t. And since I don’t know what the bend or the actual canoe looks like, I sketched up the following approach I might try for a simple angular kink. But it might give you an idea for a more complex bend shape as well.
The basic idea is the clamp a sturdy metal or wood bar to the keelson, using a 2x4 as a spacer and hose clamps to do the clamping. Now the sturdy metal or wood bar gives you something to pull against to straighten the bend. I showed using another hose clamp as the tool to pull the bend toward the sturdy bar, but maybe you have room to get some really big water pump pliers in there instead. You might have to slide the device to different spots along the bend to work the bend out a little at a time.
One caution is that the aluminum keelson will lose strength every time you bend it back and forth. And I should add that this is just in the “thought concept” stage to help think of a possible approach. Another idea would be to make a wooden framework like an upside down “U” that claps on either side of the kink using the hose clamp method. Then put a small bottle jack in the middle and gently push on the bend.
