I have an old town camper canoe it has some cracks in the hull> I talked with a local canoe shop he said there is a repair kit that will work but it looks like crap I asked about eh old town repair kits he said they wouldn’t work. I talked with Old Town they have two kits one is aputty and the other used what looks like fiberglass tape with a resin that you paint on. Has anyone tried these products and how well do they work.
Haven’t tried the kits. I assume we’re
talking about a Royalex boat here? It might help if you describe the damage in more detail. The repair method and materials depends on whether you’re filling an open hole, closing a surface crack, correcting a wrinkled stem or stern, etc. Sometimes epoxy and cloth is the best tool, sometimes putties can contribute, sometimes sheets of ABS or vinyl Kydex can be glued on, and sometimes a repair can be done by patiently painting on layers of ABS plastic dissolved in acetone.
Older boat stored in the sun?
Don’t know how it got “cracked”, but if it’s due to UV deterioration, the boat is not going to be safe for paddling. Plastic boats get brittle when left in the sun and can crack. Maybe it’s time for a new boat?
If it’s Royalex, the inner/outer vinyl
skin will have defended it very well from UV. Royalex boats may get chalky looking from long sun exposure, but as long as the vinyl is still there, the ABS underneath is not going to crack.
OK, it is Royalex, so the repair
possibilities are as I stated.
Eric Nyre, who posts often on this board, says that cracks exposing the foam core in Royalex to water will gradually make the foam brittle. This does not mean you cannot make a nice repair, or that the inner and outer layers of ABS won’t be stiff enough, but it may mean that you should not use the boat in whitewater where it is subjected to repeated blows.
Please give us some detail, even pictures, concerning the cracks. Daggermat on this board may show up and discuss his method for painting dissolved ABS. I’ll tell you how to chisel off vinyl if you need to bond layers of glass or Kevlar over the cracks.
royalex repair
I don’t do whitewater canoeing at the most class 0ne. Any help anybody can give me will be great. This canoe is like an old friend always ready for a trip Thnaks ThomT
didn’t mean to give bad info…
I was going by what we’ve been told by boat mfr and reps and experience with 30yr old boats. Ours are still good, but we store inside. Good luck with the repair.
It is true that 30 year old boats will
be more brittle, even if not stored in sun. The ABS layers in Royalex get more brittle with time, and the foam layer may get stiffer, especially if exposed to water.
The vinyl coating of Royalex is a stroke of engineering genius. Vinyl is one of the most sun-resistant plastic. That’s why you see it in siding, kiddie pools, garden hoses, etc.
Water coming through the cracks?
If there is no water coming through the cracks, just keep paddling it. I gave a boat away (well, sold it for $5) because there were a lot of cracks in it. Five years later, I still see that boat around on the rivers and no repairs were applied to the cracks.
~~Chip