I recently purchased a Sawyer canoe. The boat is in good shape overall, minus some wear and tear on the stern and bow. I was wondering if this is something I should fiberglass patch now before I really use the boat? I’ve had it on the water, and it doesn’t leak, but would I risk making a small problem into a big one if I put off patching it? If I need to fix it, should I do so with a strip of kevlar or a strip of fiberglass?
Edit: I think I’m going to be precautionary and repair with some fiberglass tape. That said, as you can see from the photos, the end caps should be replaced too. Any idea where I can find new end caps? I can provide measurements in a few hours.
Looks line gelcoat scuffs
Gel
is not structural
There usually are extra layers of glass to reinforce the stems
scrub it good and see if any are actually cracks into the float tanks
If it was mine, I would fix it prior to putting it in the water.
I would use wetted out fiber glass tape rather than kevlar. You can get the fiberglass tape in various widths.
That open fiberglass is going to suck up water
Looks to me as if someone has already laid cloth tape on the stems. On the stern, there are two pieces of 'glass tape where the stem makes a sharp curve. On the bow, the cloth runs up to just below where the broken tip of the deck plate used to be. It looks as if the repair was done in a reasonable fashion, but not great. You can see the cloth fibers at the un-feathered edges of the tape patches.
Structurally, the canoe is probably fine. Personally, I would work on it because it will look much better after it is done. I would plan to nicely feather all of the edges of the cloth used for the prior repair. On the areas not covered by the prior repair, sand through the gel coat until you see fibers from the cloth of the original lay up. I would probably use plain weave fiberglass cloth rather than tape. I would not use Kevlar.
Plain weave cloth is a little fussier to work with because it will want to fray along the cut edges. But you can cut the strips on a bias. Bias cut plain weave cloth can be made to lay down over a curved surface much better than fiberglass tape can. Tape, with the non-bias arrangement of the fibers of the weave and weft, and the selvage edge, will often need to have darts cut in it along the edges to get it to lie down over a sharp curve. The edge of plain weave fiberglass fabric can also be feathered more easily than the selvage edge of cloth tape can.
Thanks for the tips, pblanc! I went ahead and sanded the old tape down and added a layer of fiberglass cloth (not tape) as you recommended. I then sanded that down the best I could. I think I’m going to ride that out as is for the remainder of the season (this is my only boat and I want to be on the water). But I’ll feather out some body filler and clean everything up real nice at the end of the season.
