I don’t understand why Colden
even offers wood as an option, seeing as it’s so darn inferior.
Maybe it’s because it looks far prettier in their promo pics? I don’t know, but I’d sacrifice the weight (strength?) differential just to not have to look at that fugly “Cobrasox” stuff.
They sure do make a gorgeous hull, though!
Back in the day
– Last Updated: Feb-01-11 12:45 PM EST –
When Pb developed the CobraSox rail, 2006, I suggested to Joe that we should drop cherry rails immediately. He thought I was overly anticipatory.
Now CS rails account for ~90-95% of Pb's production, with a lesson in unanticipated consequences. Joe and I used to share the cherry rail ends, bucking them into ~ foot long sections as kindling for our wood burning stoves.
No cherry rails; no more kiln dried cherry kindling!
Okay, I meant SnakeSkin.
To my eye, it’s hideous, but I understand that to some performance is everything.
One construction detail has me curious, though. I do like the way you’ve managed to resolve the whole wood rails/deck/ends issue, but I can’t see by the pictures what fastens the decks. Care to shed light?
However with the issuance of tripping
boats a portage system ought to be offered compatible with SS rails. The strap on one is just a major PITA IMO.
Seems the boats are made mostly for the day tripper base camper, which presumably makes most of the market.
If wood rails are not an offering now (and I think they may be in the future) I will have to keep what I have got for the time being.
Diamond plate on plane floats has sharp edges anyway for traction…don’t know how SS will handle the vibration at 110 mph of a Beaver.
Curious about Composite Rails
– Last Updated: Feb-01-11 11:24 AM EST –
There are a couple things I wonder about composite rails. I know that dancing-canoe purists and also those that are speed/tripping-obsessed no longer believe it's proper to pry the paddle shaft against the gunwales, but plenty of people still do that in other real-world situations. I've seen some composite rails that are so narrow that prying the paddle shaft against them is likely to end up prying against the hull itself as much as the rail. Also, do these new rails stand up well to those kinds of point loads? Like Charlie said in another post here, "Hell is only half full" so I expect I'll continue to do certain kinds of braking side-slips and direct side-slips with hard paddle-shaft contact on the gunwale, and I'm still perfecting the McGuffin's recommended method for righting the boat when it's tipping way over to the offsite (plunge the paddle deep and then pry that gunwale back down where it belongs). This is also why I don't like much tumblehome in a boat that needs to do abrupt maneuvers, but at the moment, I'm naturally curious about how these gunwales hold up to that kind of point loading and wear.
By the way, one nice thing about nice wood rails is that you CAN do all sorts of prying strokes without buggering-up your paddle shaft! My paddles sometimes show the results of swift-water paddling, because square-edged vinyl gunwales are murder on wood paddle shafts.
Rails and sliding seats
– Last Updated: Feb-01-11 11:59 AM EST –
While this seems to be somewhat of an odd OP for this particular forum, the Colden canoes certainly look nice and I have always been a fan of infusion technology, though not infusion at any cost.
Bubble sided canoes do present some challenges if you want to pry off the gunwales, no matter what the rails are made of. The variant of the northwoods stroke that uses a rail pry correction doesn't work too well on bubble boats with skinny outwales. I've always thought an outwale of assymetrical width would be a sophisticated addition to my Bell Wildfire.
I think I am one of the most aggressive proponents of sliding seats in solo canoes -- even suggesting that their absence should be declared unconstitutional -- but I'm afraid a 4" travel is not sufficient. I wouldn't pay any weight penalty for such a token slide. I would pay a penalty for a 15" slide. My usual solution is to take the seat out altogether and sit on three rectangular cushions.
Don't know what Colden is doing for deck plates, but my opinion on them is general to all FW canoes: namely, I don't see their point. To me, they add weight at the very place you least want it, they promote water rot of adjoining wood rails, and they serve no useful purpose I can see. I'd prefer to see just some nicely mated snakes at each end.
Edited to add: Swift affixes a thin wooden rub rail on the outside of their infused reptile rails, which I think is a nice aesthetic and pry-functional touch. Don't know how much weight it adds.
A few layers of gaffer’s tape
applied to the right spots prior to take-off might help with abrasion concerns?
Infused rails seem limiting as to type and placement of fasteners used for future mods, as well.
Integral, Infused, Comp. Rails
The integral, infused composite rails available on Colden, Placid and Swift boats have several advantages.
Initially, we understand the attachment system; rails and hull are one chunk of fibre re-enforced plastic with two foam cores in unique locations. No snugging of screws.
They save 3.5 lbs on a 12 foot solo canoe, reducing a 24 lb hull to 20.5 with deluxe outfitting attached, a 15% weight reduction. Not bad, especially as none of us except high school footballers are getting stronger.
They don’t dry out and crack, require annual sanding and oiling or sanding and Poly application.
For portaging, the Grade VI Portage Strap from Placid/ BagLady, etc works pretty well on very light, tumblehomed hulls, but soon, the Colden side pod track will have an available, trim adjustable composite portage yoke w/ CVCC pads.
Colden’s side pods have ~18" slider tracks, but the seat is 10" wide leaving +/-4" adjustment. A 60lb Lab, sitting with mass centered a foot forward of the paddlers knees would require a 200lb guy to slide back ~3.5 inches to maintain trim if he didn’t have other gear in the boat to help. In terms of strength, weight and cost, we figured an 18" track would do pretty well.
More on seats and rails
Oh, +/- 4 inches. That’s more interesting. I was thinking 4" total.
That sliding range could be increased if one is willing to break out of the mental box of boring stock cane seats, which typically have seat rail spacing equal to the depth of the seat. That is, a 10" deep stock cane seat usually has rails that are spaced about the same 10".
Why not space the seat rails closer together to increase the sliding seat range? That’s what Mike Galt did on the Lotus Caper. That’s also what Dave Curtis does with the Deal bucket seat in the Hemlock SRT. In both cases, a contoured kneeling seat of depth X inches is mounted on seat rails that are spaced (X-4) inches apart … approximately.
As to reptile rails, the last time I saw them they had a square or rectangular cross section, which obviously means four sharp corners. Why not have reptile rails with a circular or elliptical cross section? This would eliminate the sharp corners while possibly even increasing lateral strength.
Sounds like the seat will be an nice
innovation.
I juat talked to Paul. He clarified that the first DragonFly will have infused rails and tanks but subsequently wood rails will be available.
What really strikes me is that apart from hull design Colden will be able to really offer several choices for rails and seats and colors…more than mass production manufacturers.
Solves one, creates another
Standard, ~ 9 inches across seat bars, with holes bored on 8" centers are industry standard and fit with most component maker’s seat drops. Narrowing the spacing eliminates stability, putting more stress on seat and track as today’s older, wider, solo paddler kneel on the seat front edge or scoot back when sitting.
In a world totally without free lunches, both seat cross bars and side pods would need more strength/weight as cross bars come together and twisting forces increase.
There’s nothing but tooling keeping Paul from introducing a 4" wide kneeling thwart for those who want more trim adjustment, but it’ll probably need wait 'till after the portage yoke.
Colden cannot have seat breakage as they introduce their new SidePod Slider, so a known overbuild is way better than good enough for most. Hmm, sounds like a tasty burger!
Don’t buy the evil torque theory
Been sitting on a Galt seat for 25 years and, older and wider, on a Deal bucket for two. There is no sign of torque stress because of the more closely spaced seat rails. That theory, extended, would invalidate kneeling thwarts.
Actually, I don’t understand whether the Colden slider is mounted on top of the pods, a la the Caper, or suspended from the gunwales. Perhaps CW could clarify.
Whichever, I hope it is easily removable. I consider that feature invaluable on the Caper. I remove the seat when I want to sit on the bottom of the canoe, and also whenever I cartop the canoe. Who would steal a canoe with no seat, much less one with a proprietary seat mounting mechanism?
I see what you mean about the seats,
… but not about the kneeling thwart. Since a kneeling thwart is not significantly wider where you sit than where it attaches to the drops or gunwale (as the case may be), you really can’t generate much torque by loading the front or rear edge instead of the center (if that kind of edge-loading were even likely).
Anyway, I agree with both of you “in principle”. Charlie is right that the mounts carry greater stress when the seat is edge-loaded if they are closer together, but I suspect for paddlers of average weight, there will usually be more than enough reserve strength already. For paddlers already “capable” of breaking standard seats, given enough time on the water (BIG guys - I know this has happened), I think the torque issue would be real.
Agree about the thwart, but
Yes, the kneeling thwart is not a good example of the logical extension of the torque theory.
But I’m trying to get away from thinking in terms of the stock cane seat, which is a flat plane. On such a flat plane some paddlers do sit on the front edge. However, that shouldn’t damage a properly structured seat unless we are talking about a very big person.
More importantly, the contoured solo seats made by Galt and Curtis are canted at an angle to the plane of the seat rails. They are blocked up in the rear on top of the seat rails. Hence, you don’t sit on the edge of the seat when you are kneeling; your entire bottom is in the seat pan. Hence, there is not much front edge torque or total weight on the seat.
These kinds of contoured and canted seats are what I would expect on a high end solo kneeling canoe. Galt made some seats with leather webbing. Gorgeous and comfortable. Hemlock’s kneeling buckets are molded carbon fiber. Very functional for kneeling or sit 'n switch paddling.
These canted seats are higher off the bottom than stock seats because the seat pan does lay above the plane of the rails, and that might create a problem. Depending upon how the interior sponsons are designed and where they are placed, the seats may be too high for shorter paddlers.
I would also be happy with a carbon fiber kneeling pedestal that slides in a long floor track, having a canted tractor seat top, and which could be easily removed for shore use. That would avoid the weight of sponsons altogether, the need for seat drops and the whole torque issue, while providing a very long slide range.
Everything is possible for him who doesn’t have to make it.
The Colden Synthetic Seat
Colden’s synthetic seat is a shaped, foam cored, Snakeskin frame with a separate, shaped seat pan. Frame and pan are sloped. That is the easiest way to build the required angle into a system with horizontal tracks.
Look forward to seeing it (nt)
Composite rails-my experience
I had the pleasure of paddling my
Retail prices…
Estimated retail price for a Dragonfly with infused rails, and one with wood rails would be?
More than you paid for your used one
You thinking of an upgrade already Bob?
Just curious…
Just curious about the new Dragonfly prices.
I would really like to find a used, composite Wildfire .
BOB