Anybody wet the canvas with water after stretching?

[Howie]

I thought I read about this somewhere in the Threads, but can't seem to find it. Does anybody routinely wet the canvas with water after it's stretched & tacked? I believe I read that the canvas fibers swell when wet & that this causes the canvas to shrink. I'm wondering if this might be extra insurance that the canvas is tight... or might it actually cause wrinkles.

 

[Andy Hutyera]

I don't routinely wet the canvas, but if I see puckers or wrinkes that won't come out despite fussing with the staples I will wet the canvas with a spray bottle. It has worked like a charm for me in the past. This was especially true on a short beamy canoe. The canvas would not pull tight no matter what I did. I wet the problem areas with spray. After it dried the puckers were all gone and never came back. The canvas shrank nicely.

 

[Gil Cramer]

I have done many canvassing demos stretching only by hand. Sometimes I have used water to shrink the canvas where there were puckers. Occasionally, I have even resorted to water and a torch. As Andy said, the short fat canoes are the absolute worst-even in a sling. Rarely, do I ever wet a canvas when a sling is used do the stretching.
We are scheduled to do a hand canvassing demo Sat., March 2nd at the Quietwater Symposium in East Lansing. We being Mike Darga and myself. Mike has done so many of the demos that he hands me the tool I need before I realize that I need it.

 

[Rod Tait (Orca Boats)]

I generally will wet the canvas down after I take the torch to it to burn off fuzz. This does tighten up the canvas, but mostly washes off the dirt from the burning. I know many don't burn off the fuzz anymore, but I always have and probably always will. If you want it real tight, take a hose to it on a hot, sunny day and that canvas will really tighten up.

 

[Tony Muer]

Good evening. Gill could you please tell me more about the quiet water symposium in east Lansing. I would like,very much to attend as I’m in the process of recanvasing a 1938 Old town Otce 18’ and would find this very helpful.

 

[Tony Muer]

Gill I’m interested inwhere you expect to conduct your demonstration and the time

 

[pklonowski]

The Quietwater Symposium is held at the Pavilion for Agriculture & Livestock, at the Michigan State U campus in East Lansing, MI. https://quietwatersociety.org/ It's always a good time, and watching the masters work makes it even better...

 

[Howie]

Gil - You're making me feel like less of a dolt. The wrinkles are on a 10' Penn Yan Auto Canoe. I use the canvas envelope with come-along technique. Had an awful time getting the wrinkles out of the front/rear areas by the stem. And once they seemed ok the couldn't get the wrinkles out around the rails. I'm thinking it's the stubby nose + relatively wide body + deep tumblehome that did me in. But what I can't figure out is why the wrinkles didn't show up at all until 1 day after the 2nd coat of paint was on - everything looked fine until then. Ah well. Am getting more canvas & mud to give it another go.

 

[Gil Cramer]

The Canvassing demo @QWS will be in the morning, probably starting around 10am or 11 am. The canoe is a 20 OT guide using #10, 72" untreated canvas.
Howie, Canvassing when the weather is warm and/or the humidity high will almost always result in puckers and wrinkles after the humidity and temperature drop. Before re-canvassing, I would pour hot water between the canvas and the hull of the canoe to hopefully shrink the canvas. I would do it more than once. Hope this helps. Gil

 

[dmd421]

The Michigan Chapter will have a booth in the arena, near where the canoe canvas will be. Stop by and see us on Saturday March 2nd 2019.

~The Michigan Chapter

 

[Dave Wermuth]

I'm planning on being there. If I have a wrinkle I spritz it with water and then put the iron to it.

 

[Howie]

Gil... But the canvas has been mudded. And painted. You still think hot water might fix it? Mind you, I'll try it... But really?

 

[Dave Osborn]

Howie
I would try a little restretching before scrapping the whole thing. I had to do it on a couple of canoes early on in my addiction. I had already trimmed the canvas (which I don’t do now until it is painted), so I popped the staples and pulled the wrinkles out with a pliers and re-stapled. Came out fine.

 

[MGC]

These are not the typical wrinkles near the rails and stems...they are side to side across the bottom in line with the direction the ribs run. He'd need to un-tack the canvas from the stems (all finished in and painted) and pull the length of the hull to affect these...or so it seems. If he is able to pull some towards the stems by pulling vertizonatally from the middle he'd be pulling towards the stems and run into the same challenge...once you finish out the canvas at the stems there"s nothing left to work with. I'm not sure how he can accomplish a lot now that it's filled and painted. This is a pretty challenging one.

 

[Howie]

Right Mike - easier to just recanvas. I'm just really curious how it could look just fine until the 2nd coat of paint was applied. I want to say live & learn... but not sure what I've learned...

 

[Dave Wermuth]

Could it be that the canoe shranked, not the canvas?

 

[mccloud]

This has been an particularly appropriate discussion for me right now, as I am getting ready to prime the canoe I intend to bring to Assembly in July....except...
This canoe had canvas stretched at mini-Assembly in October by an experienced crew. Canvas was real tight. Got filler a bit later and dried for nearly 4 months. Sanding was done as the weather allowed.
I first noticed some bagginess near a bow, pulled staples and tightened. Now I see waves all along the gunwale line. I have been contemplating dumping boiling water on it. But I'm inclined to agree with Dave, that we are not shrinking the canvas any more, but rather putting water back into very dry wood, which has shrunk. Tom McCloud

 

[NickD]

Very interesting discussion. I have an OTCA that developed wrinkles after filling and paint. Interestingly, on humid days, or when the canoe has been in the water and the inside has gotten wet, the wrinkles disappear. I've always assumed the hull swells just enough to stretch them out. During the winter, the wrinkles appear. Guess I'll just have to keep paddling it.

 

[Fitz]

I had a canoe shrink in a heated space once and the canvas loosened. I moved it to the unheated garage and it has been fine ever since.

Fitz

 

[Michael Grace]

This discussion and my experience say that humidity levels can cause serious changes. I'm dealing with this problem now, for the first time ever after having canvassed many canoes. This one is canvassed, filled and painted (painted months after filling). When humidity levels increase, the canoe looks fantastic. When humidity goes down, wrinkles appear. I've let it go now for several months and the problem persists - I see changes every time a front passes through.

But here's the twist - this only happens on one end of the canoe, and that's important. I started with a filler from a gallon can that I had opened and used half of a couple of years ago. The filler smelled awful, and the oil had turned nearly black. Still, I tried it after adding a little bit of liquid mold killer ("MX-3 Complete Mildewcide", 3-iodo-2-propynyl-butylcarbamate). The mildewcide says that it is appropriate for water-based and oil-based paints (which makes no sense to me), and it didn't seem to mix well with the filler. The filler went on poorly in that area and only dried after a MUCH longer time than usual. When I realized the problems there I switched to another batch of filler for the rest of the canoe. It's only on the area of the first filler batch that the wrinkling occurs.

I'm not sure what all of this means or how it relates to others' experiences, but hopefully adding this information will help us all better understand what's going on when we have these problems.