I recently purchased a used Wenonah Itasca. The wood gunwales are in great shape except that what looks to be epoxy filling the gap between the inner an outer gunwales has cracked, or pulled away from one gunwale or the other.
Any thoughts on whether I’d be okay scraping the groove clean with the gunwales left on the boat, or do I need to remove them to get every bit of the old gunk off?
Any recommendations for what to use to re-fill the gap? I’m thinking of trying G-Flex as I thought it might be more resistant to the cracking that has appeared in the current stuff.
Thanks
I’ll bet its varnish and not epoxy
No mention of Wenonah using epoxy for gunwale attatchment and I can see no reason to use it post installation.
Varnish…yes. Gunwales do flex and varnish does crack especially in a gap.
That you have a used boat with gunwales in great shape suggests varnish.
Don’t think it is varnish.
The gunwales are oiled rather than varnished. The inner and outer are screwed together with the Kevlar in between. There is no groove in the gunwales to accommodate the kevlar so the result is a gap between the two rails - above the Kevlar. This gap is where the epoxy (or similar material) was used.
G-flex is not all that much more flexy
than regular West epoxy. Maybe there is a urethane, such as Aquaseal, that could fill the gap and stay flexible.
