Hi all–I’m looking at a used Rx canoe, and thought I’d ask folks with more knowledge than me a couple of questions.
There’s some wear on the bow through the outer blue (vinyl?) layer and into a whitish (ABS?) layer below. Is that something I should be concerned about? Looked like normal wear and tear from running it up onto shore to me, rather than from crashing into something, and nothing alarming. Picture below, which may or may not show up.
The boat has a center seat I’d replace with a yoke. Is that a big deal? Gunnels are vinyl if that makes a difference.
The exposed ABS structural layer is vulnerable to UV, so you would need to paint over it. Krylon Fusion is handy. A more permanent patch would require some time and materials. Ask if you care. I just spray over the exposed areas as needed. The swaths of spray paint are distinctive and make theft less likely.
Removing the seat is easy. Installing the yoke just requires finding the approximate balance point, cutting the yoke to length, drilling the yoke ends and the gunwales, and attaching with stainless hardware. You may be able to use the hardware from the seat you take out.
Looks like normal wear, however Without skid plates enough wear will reveal the foam core and that’s not good. Think about applying more than paint if you buy it. Doesn’t have to be right away, but a near future project.
Yea that is very typical wear on the ends of a royalex canoe and it is very common to install bang plates on the end to protect that area at some point. I would not worry about that.
Does the wear look that bad? I expect its been run up on a couple of concrete boat ramps, something I’ll hopefully avoid. More inclined towards just paint.
Wenonah offers matching touch up paint to the blue. I expect after 15 years it wouldn’t match anymore, and isn’t any better than the Krylon?
Not bad That does not look bad. If I were not going to bang that bow into stuff I’d go with the paint. If you’re going to do whitewater and scrape it across the occasional rock, I’d slap a skid plate on it.
You can search for “skid plate” in the archives and you’ll come up with lots of advice for installing skid plates.
