I have recently become acquainted with a used 2000 mad river outrage (royalex), which has a couple scrapes that have worn through the outer layer of the hull. These 2 spots show white where the rest of boat is colored blue. A couple of other paddlers have reccomended that I paint bottem of hull to help fill in all the scratches and to protect the thinner areas from UV radiation.
Does anyone have any experiences or thoughts on this? If so, what type of paint would be best? I don’t really want to be leaving paint chips around. I was also considering skid plates which would help protect these 2 worn spots mainly.
Thanks in advance.
Mad River used to offer a spray paint
formulated to stick well to Royalex, and in some cases matched to their hull colors. I don’t know if it is still available.
Skid plates are the accepted solution, though personally I prefer three or four layers of bias cut cloth, the largest layer going on first. S-glass is available from johnrsweet.com and makes a great cloth for the purpose. Requires West epoxy for the resin.
The Kevlar felt skid plate kits are notable mainly for their ease of use. Kevlar felt is not the optimum material for the job, but if you do a good application, it will last pretty well.
I was looking…
Thanks g2d,
I didn’t see spray paint being offered anymore on the mad river website. Maybe I can try the skid plate set-up you mentioned.
Thanks again!