I left my old Mad River Outrage behind the toolshed all year when we moved. The serial number is MAD14327K900, so I’m guessing some time around 2000 or 2001. The outer gunwale on one side is both rotted and cracked thru in 2 spots. When I removed it I also noticed a big crack in the hull under the gunwale.
The inner gunwale looks and feels ok, I redid all the pads and straps a few years ago.
The wood seems to be 13/16” rounded trim (possibly 7/8” to the rounded edge.
I’ve never bent wood:
can I replace this gunwale myself? Are gunwales like this available somewhere preshaped?
how should I repair this 5” thru and thru crack in the hull?
Thanks guys, I really want to get back in my old boat again
I have that same Outrage in mango with vinyl gunwales…
has some notes but not full instructions.
the crack is easily repaired, get some fiberglass or kevlar and some G-Flex epoxy.
Cracks are shearing situations and will continue to grow if not “capped”. Melting makes a more stress-free cap than drilling so cap each crack in the hull ABS by pushing a heated 1/8” drill, shank endfirst, through the ABS at the crack’s end. Meltonly to the foam core. It’s really easy to melt all the way through the inner sheet of the ABS too so you must take care not to.
After doing that, wash the hull around the crack with soap and water, let dry, clean with alcohol. Tape around the repair area. Apply G-flex then fiberglass, wet the fiberglass fully. I usually do a fiberglass patch both inside and outside for the longer cracks like that.
Use saran wrap or similar to cover the patch while curing, this helps to get a smoother finish. Watch for drips for the first few hours of curing the epoxy, wipe up.
I’ve used kevlar to repair a much-cracked Royalex hull on a ME Explorer. At that point it seemed the consensus was kevlar with G-flex epoxy, single patch. Others like 3 layers of 6oz fiberglass instead. To me it seems that would build up quite a lot of epoxy over the patch, so I went with Kevlar Aramid cloth 5oz. On the long cracks I did a patch outside and inside, on the smaller ones just on the inside and made sure to fill the crack with epoxy.
So far that’s held up five years and counting, bouncing down rapids, long portages in Boundary Waters, etc.
Gunwales are harder, I had great difficulty finding new gunwales, and there were none local to me. Shipping the 12-18’ bits of wood is v expensive.
I used the knock-down gunwales, like these
I almost forgot, if you have any questions regarding G-Flex, the man to talk to is Terry Monville (tjm@gougeon.com) the Technical Advisor at Gougeon Brothers the owners of West Systems.
I forget all of the specifics, but G-Flex (there are two versions)) works best with certain types of cloth, weight, weave and type.
Hey Doug, terry from West Systems wrote back and recommended this V repair for Royalex: Royalex Canoe Repair with G/flex Epoxy - Epoxyworks
It looks like a reasonable repair (from 2006): but I’m leaning towards your repair with fiberglass on the inside: what do you think?
