So… I picked up a canoe identical to this one
http://yfrog.com/6ccanoecj
It had some repairs done on the skid plate, below the middle support bar.
Whats it made of?
I was fishing the delaware in deposit ny on it and went thru some shallows and scraped a little, the repairs that the previous owner did failed, now there is a small hole in the bottom, She takes about 3 gallons of water in a few hours.
I took it out a few times before, with two people. The day it failed I was with my (heavy) friend and im going to assume him moving about messed up the repair.
Whats the best way to fix this? He said he used marine epoxy, which doesn’t seem like it would hold.
I don’t plan on taking this one thru ANY place it can scrape again. Ill leave that for a kayak.
Thanks
-Drew
coleman-poly
people melt plastic milk bottles into the crack. Plastic welder may work.
skid plate
I take it I should remove all the old epoxy, clean it well, hit it very lightly with a heat gun, then try and melt the milk bottles into it?
Can I cover it with some sort of skid plate kit after the milk bottles?
You can get some 4oz tubes of West
G-flex epoxy for about $16 bucks. You might even want to get the pre-thickened version. Follow West’s instructions exactly, including the flaming step with the torch. If you want, get the non-thickened G-flex and use a little fiberglass in the patch. I would be inclined to do the patch job on the inside as well as the outside. G-flex will somewhat outperform so-called marine epoxies. It is tougher and more flexible than regular West epoxy.
epoxy
Okay, I think Ill grab some fiberglass and do it on both sides, and a use up the rest of the glass on the front/back skid plate.
Is two gflex kits enough to do both the front and back of the skid plate, and a small peanut sized hole?
milk jug
I decided to cheap out and try a milk jug. Seems to be super strong! It looks like they used epoxy and bondo under the front of the skid plate.
I just cut up the jug in tiny peices (using a paper shredder lol) and put a large peice on the holes, heated and smoothed it down, then built it up using the shreds.
How well does this repair work?
Depends on how well teh "solder"
In part, it depends on how compatible the melted milk jug material is with the hull material.
Used to repair plastic snowmobile gas tanks using this method, and the repair would usually last a few years.
A better tool to use for a repair like this is a soldering iron. With the tip of the iron, you can carefully melt a thin channel along the crack, and can kind of meld the melted milk jug in with the slightly melted hull material - probably wouldn’t hurt to take a shim and try and force some of the melted milk jug into the crak if possible.
How long it will last just depends. If the two materails are similar enough - i.e. they will flex about the same, and will expand and contract with changes in temperature (winter storage)about the same, it should last for years.
The gas tanks we used to repair (used coffee can lids as “solder” ) used to be ok till a couple of winters went by - I always thought it was due to expansion/contraction at different rates for thew two materials. A canoe repair I’d think, would last longer as you aren’t dealing with gasoline residue on the hull.
Good enterprise, Erebus, and good
info from Mattt. The success of a hot repair depends on how well one can get a good gradient of heat from where material is being added back to the remainder of the hull. Poly is certainly one of the more willing materials to heat bond to itself, but if the repair zone is heated and cooled too unevenly, the repair won’t last as long.