Recently purchased a Sawyer canoe, mainly based on the positive comments I found on this site. I’d like to learn a bit more about my canoe.
Serial number: saw03009e485
Length: 17’ 1”
Width: 36”
There is a peeling sticker that says Goldenglass.
In researching, I believe the serial number says that it was built 5.4.85?
There isn’t a plate stating max weight and such.
Would love to learn anything you can tell me about it.
I attached a couple of pictures of some damage. Any suggestions on how to fix the aluminum where it is tearing on the seat? There is a small ding in the hull. Should I fix it? Any tips?
That’s in pretty good shape for an old boat. Goldenglass was a structural fiberglass ( S glass) . Its tough. The hull nick is gel coat. Its not structural. You can shield the fibers below by dabbing a little marine paint in the hole ( forget matching the gel coat). You might consider buffing and compounding the whole hull to get rid of the oxidation.
You sure on the length? The X 17 is closest but at 17 feet
The simple chip in the gel coat could be filled in with many things including polyester gel coat repair putty, epoxy, or Bondo. Even if you used green gel coat repair material you would not get a color match, so I would just fill it it, sand it smooth and flush, and paint it with whatever paint you could find that gave a reasonable color match, perhaps an auto touch up paint.
As for the aluminum seat hanger that supports the front sliding seat that is tearing, you definitely want to do something about that before it gets worse. My thought is to get one or more steel small steel L brackets and trim them to fit the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the aluminum hanger bracket. Bang the torn end of the hanger bracket back into proper position. Drill off the heads of the pop rivets securing the torn end of the hanger and put the steel L bracket beneath the hanger so that the horizontal portion of the L bracket supported the underside of the torn hanger. Drill a hole or holes through the vertical portion of the L bracket for a new rivet or rivets. Use steel pop rivets to replace the original aluminum ones.
If you are good using epoxy and repair fabrics you could probably build up some type of support shelf beneath the torn end of the bracket and 'glass it in to the side of the hull and that would look a bit neater.
For the aluminum seat bracket, I would visit a good welding shop and see if they can weld it. I believe aluminum can be TIC welded. I am not a welder so I may be incorrect in this. If it can be welded, you would probably need to remove the mount by drilling out the rivets and re-rivet it back in after repair. I would use aluminum rivets, so you don’t have a rust issue in the future.
I’m going to go another route for the seat bracket repair. The way Sawyer installed the support angle there is a lot of material in the middle of the bracket that is not supporting anything. remove the bracket, cut off the front section an inch or two behind the last of the front rivet holes, and reinstall it. Then cut two sections of the remaining solid angle bracket about two inches longer than is necessary to cover the rear three rivet holes. Stack the two segments of angle bracket and drill them to match the 3 rivet holes and install them stacked to make a double thickness support. Its a weak point of that slider design along with the machine screw that attaches the slide rail tube to the cross tube. The hole in the cross tube really weakens the cross tube at the point where the most weight is applied. I have fixed multiple slider setup in Wenonah’s that are similar. Big problem with all of the them is that the heaviest paddlers move the seat to the full rearward position and that puts a higher percentage of the paddler weight on the rear of the seat frame, tearing the angle bracket because as you can see, the cross tube is bearing on the extreme end of the angle bracket. Moving more of the angle bracket behind the crosstube location will help a lot. Ideally the crosstube should rest just under the middle rivet of the rear group. Doubling up the angle bracket will solve the issue. I don’t recommend welding aluminum this thin. You have the material you need in the canoe except the rivets, Make sure you get rivets with large diameter heads, not the hardware store poprivets. There is no need or advantage to having a continuous bracket over tow short sections, except it made the original install easier, they only had to measure for the front of one bracket. Hope this helps, Bill
Andy, you did a stellar job on the restoration of that Summersong.
Looks like it came off of a showroom floor; you do craftsman quality work.
I love to see an old canoe “come back” so to speak.
Lots of great advice, thanks everyone! I was able to take it out on the water this past weekend and it was a dream. It’s a bit heavy but that won’t be an issue for what I am using it for. I’ll re-post once I get it all cleaned up.
