Bear Mountain Canoe with UV damaged fibreglass.

[Kiwikanoe]

I built a Bear Mountain cedar strip 5meter canoe with epoxy and glass in about 94.
Sadly it has been exposed on one side to Uv and the fibreglass has discoloured and split in a few small places.
Do I need to completely take it all back to bare wood? - a tricky proposition given the strength of the bond on 90% of the
canoe and the softness of the cedar substrate.
Is there a known method of doing this or just spend weeks hand sanding?

 

[pklonowski]

I would suspect that those "few small places" are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg...

You can use a heat gun and putty knife to soften the epoxy and lift the glass off the hull. This would be faster than hand sanding, though you need to proceed ssslllooowwwlllyyy if you want to avoid pulling out pieces of cedar. Keep a water bucket with a rag handy, in case something starts burning. After that's done, the sanding and picking bits of epoxy out of various crevices begins. It's meticulous work; if you count your time, it'll probably cost less to build two or three new canoes than it would to fix this.

It's a tough decision... when I had to strip off the 'glass from my canoe, I did the work, and it came out looking... well, less badly than I had feared, though it's far from new-looking. When it was done, I declared Never Again.

Best of luck, on making the decision and doing the repairs, if you decide to go that route.