I was cleaning up and 303ing my boats today and noticed a very long hairline scratch on the Vagabond. I am wondering if I should be concerned. And if so is there something I can fill it with. I have no idea how it got there, but I did portage over lots of trees in a fast moving current last weekend :-O. I guess it’s about big enough to stick the tip of a straight pin in, but it looks deep. I don’t know how thick the outer skin is on royalex. Any thoughts?
Best disguise it
by surrounding it with at least six hundred thousand other scratches that look nearly the same. Really, Royalex boats are made to be used.
Okay, maybe I was a bit
too snarky. If you’re worried that the ABS layer has been sliced through to the foam core, you can measure the depth of the cut with a feeler guage made from something like the aforementioned point of a common pin, or anything that will fit (a hair?). If the depth is more than 1/8 of an inch deep, perpendicular to the surface, you might want to talk to the dealer or manufacturer. Also, try flexing the inverted hull some by applying pressure (sit on it) at various places to see if there might be a tendency to ‘crease’ at the slice. I don’t think that you should be too concerned. Daggermat; Dang, boy, I had a '72 AMC Hornet that I painted Rustoleum ‘forest green’ with a brush that wasn’t as ugly as THAT!
I had a similar scratch when my MR
Synergy was only a few weeks old. In my case, the scratch went down through the vinyl surface layer, and showed the aqua color of the ABS layer underneath. Vinyl is very resistant to UV damage (that’s one big reason it’s there) but ABS, the true source of the structural strength of the boat, is easily weakened by UV exposure.
I had a two-tube product called 3M Structural Adhesive. This is a urethane glue. I mixed up a little, and forced it into the scratch with a spatula. It dried to a tan color which did not match the color of the boat, but SO WHAT? That urethane is still there. It has not rubbed off or pulled out, and seems not damaged by UV.
It sounds like your scratch does NOT go down into the ABS, so you can ignore it if you want to. Or you can go get some of that 3M and fill the scratch. Wenonah can probably provide a spray paint that matches your hull. But I recommend that you just go paddling.
By the way, it is rare for scratches to get down into the ABS, except at the stems, where people sometimes put skid plates to protect the ABS. It is EXTREMELY rare for anything to cut through the vinyl, the ABS, and into the foam layer. Here in Georgia, we see that problem only when someone hits one of the old iron rods left from Civil War days.
I prefer to call it
"theftproof green!".