Hubby must have got stuck on a rock or jumped in canoe and hit a rock when doing so cause a ‘chunk’ of the royalex is out of the boat.
He is a hefty dude, weighing 250 lbs, and I kept warning him to not launch that boat unless he had plenty of water not to bottom out. So not sure how it
happened but now it has.
About a 1 inch chunk of the royalex is gone. It has like a 1/2 - 3/4 inch in depth gone. When you turn over the canoe you can see daylight in that corner.
I told him to repair it before our next trip in 3 weeks where we’ll be in alligator infested waters and really don’t want to sink!..
(This is why I always take my duct tape - and of course he has always laughed at me for it saying it is a waste of time…uh huh!)
Any suggestions for an easy repair. I have found royalex repair kits on line for $44.00 (cheapest, I’ve found) Want to do it right and really didn’t know if we needed the whole kit, or what.
Figure he’ll fix the rest of the scratches in the boat while he’s at it!
Thanks everyone, Jo
some work, huh?
I don’t think the hubby realizes how much time and/or work this might take.
He’ll probably go for the kit and be done with it.
I did notice a lot of scratches on the bottom some about 12 inches long…and I do see white…so that
means ‘foam’ is exposed. We should patch it and paint it then to make it correct again?
Jo
my biggest repair
cutting out foam, laying in gorilla glue was 20 minutes, wait overnight, sand glue, paint slurry, maybe another 40 minutes. Painted patches maybe another 10 minutes a few days later. The white is most likely abs (under the colored vinyl skin) and won’t need the glue, just a couple thin coats of abs. I find the repair kits awfully small, especially as my favorite runs are loaded with granite. A month ago I mixed a quart of this up, and used it all up in 30 minutes, then mixed another quart and covered a couple more canoes the next day. 5 canoes ready for another warm weather season of poling and rock bashing in the frothy stuff.
There are other methods, “Shoe Goop”, found at retail stores, is highly thought of.
lol, really don’t want to sink in …
… Alligator infested waters !!
You have some good motovation there !! Pretty certain you’ll get it fixed before your trip , but keep the duct tape with ya too .
daggermat’s approach is ok for some
repairs, and will probably be strong enough for Florida conditions, but I have to say that it won’t work if the same spot gets hammered in whitewater.
A second concern I have is that you MUST keep acetone from getting at the Royalex for any length of time. I left an acetone can with a slow-leaking top in my Royalex boat, and when I came back, the acetone had soaked through the inner grey vinyl skin, had destroyed the inner ABS layer, and had gone on through the foam to seriously soften the outer ABS layer. So, painting a mixture of dissolved ABS and acetone requires technique---- light strokes, allowing the acetone to quickly evaporate. Otherwise you’re in for it.
The ABS repair kit is safer, and the result will be as good.
Personally, I would fill the foam gap with a mixture of West G-flex epoxy and microballoons, and then I would put on two or three layers of S-glass with G-flex. Ugly but effective. But for Florida, that’s overkill.
hmmm…
it's been working for me for 3 years, 5 canoes, some of which get out 60 times a year. The ends get redone annually, as do re-gouges, but the repair is at least as tough as the parent material. Way better than the vinyl skin, and holds up to boofs etc...
The poling boats take a real beating with minimal wear compared to a fresh hull. I coat the entire bottom on these and often push up ledges.If you check the link to photos in my bio., you'll see a lot of rock in the paddling albums. I've hit every rock, at least twice ;-).
Personally, I think the OP could get away with the shoe goop, which is also available on-line.Personally, i would pack a t-bone steak or a small dog, just in case!!
That’'s what needs to be tested. I know
that painted ABS works well enough for proponents to continue. But I very much doubt that a plate made of painted ABS would be as strong as a plate of the same dimensions made at the factory. And when the repair involved a hole punched in the Royalex, reinforced epoxy starts to look really good.
on the
Whitesell pirana, i was surprised that the sponginess was due to water penetrated foam, seemed to be open cell and thick, explaining the light weight of that boat for it's huge volume. Cutting out the foam and gooping in thick abs made that area the stiffest area of the hull, and being dead bottom and surviving seal launches and boofs for 3 seasons (though not a main boat anymore) makes me feel this is the toughest area of that particular hull. The Daggers, otoh, are constructed I believe using the 7 layered Royalex. I've gone into the fourth layer on my encore (good old New Boston!). All i can say is, ain't no Royalex as tough as those old Daggers, and the abs is helping Aaron and me get a few more seasons out of these old jewels. I'll be going to Kaz when these finally wear out. On my Dumoine in Royalite, I coated the entire bottom in 2 thin coats and though the paint wears off, the coating holds tough.Rocks and ledges are a huge part of the poling game around here.
The main thing I notice on the pirana is some shrinkage around the patch(hairline cracks, easily filled), probably due to the 70 degree temp. variation this boat endures doing year round paddling in New england (25-90 degrees my paddling range, water temps 27-75). I'd wonder about epoxy in this scenario as well. This boat was originally epoxy repaired, patch fell off on a winter seal launch. It was a lousy job from prior owner and doesn't keep me from thinking a proper repair would be fine, but coefficients of expansion of very dissimilar materials will keep me in the abs as will the low price.
Anybody heard/tried this?
I heard that boat repairs can be made with melted para cord. Just hold it over a flame and drip the hot materiel into the hole. Anybody ever tried this?
Tom
It’s been done often on poly kayaks,
but is seldom done on other boat materials. Obviously poly has some affinity for poly, just as ABS painted on ABS works well.
G-Flex
Between my father and I we have had our share of minor damage to royalex hulls and fixed them all with G-flex epoxy. I don’t have experiance with other self fix it items, but can say we have not had one problem yet with the 3 boats we repaired. If the damage is severe like a hole they do include a filler substance to mix in to fill the hole.
Also if we need more support we put a layer of epoxy then a thin layer of fiberglass, epoxy, fiberglass etc… until we have the area repaired to our liking. We have not had any direct impact blows to our repairs but they have been scratched and dinged around with no apparent sign of damage. We just repaired a 5" long hole in the bottom of a kayak and it is paddling ok, curious how it holds on a dirrect hit. I have heard nothing but good stuff about G-flex though, just follow the instructions that come with it.
another alternative
When there is a puncture or a void in the hull that is not too large, I have sometimes used 3M “Scotch Weld” 2 part urethane adhesive (3M 3549), sometimes also called “structural adhesive”, to fill the gap and repair the hull. It bonds well to Royalex and the repairs I have done with it have held up well.
The potential disadvantage is that the material becomes pretty stiff after it cures. If it is used to repair an area of hull subject to a lot of flexing, the stiffness of the material could cause it to crack or separate from the adjacent Royalex. I haven’t had this happen, but I have heard others report it. If the damage is near the stem, where the boat is very stiff anyway, this might work well.
It is relatively easy to use like any 2 part epoxy.
Fiberglass cloth
well wetted with JB Weld. Layer it in one piece at a time. Sand it down to canoe surface level. Layer one more glass cloth with a standard marine grade fiberglass resin mix. Sand it until it looks like a canoe again. Can use the cloth/glass mix for the smaller scratches also. Old Town and Mohawk both have good repair techniques on their sites.
so far so good
I want to thank all of you. I bought a Dagger Swannee canoe for $50. it had 2 long cracks at each end an numerous sracrhes all went throught the green plastic down to the white foam. the previous owner appeared to JB weld the cracks and it started to crack off and expose the foam and din’t even mend the cracks on each end. well two days ago I gorilla glued the cracks and scratches to protect the foam, and this morning I slurried the ends put a piece of fiberglass cloth down and slurried over that. just waiting for it to dry. The black ABS takes away from the astetic appeal,but if I couldn’t fix it the wife was going to turn it into a redneck front yard ornament/planter! And i don’t think my kid will care what it looks like as long as we can take it fishing. Over the past few months I have aquired a yankee canoe for $100 w/oars and jackets and now the dagger.
just checked it
the slurry has dried and is hard as stone, I’ll put 2nd coat over the cloth. this worked great. I’m going to mix up gallons of it and start to coat everything with a layer of ABS plastic! i’ll start with the kids knees and elbows.
ABS Canoe repair
I have done this to two canoes and the patch is stronger than the canoe. The patch is permanent and will outlast the boat.
http://www.gapaddle.com/safety-and-training/316-royalex-canoe-repair.html