My daughter and I are restoring a Chestnut Prospector which my daughter will use this summer on a 1,000 mile trip covering the length of the Churchill River. Obviously, this boat will receive a lot of heavy, wilderness use. We have been told that it's possible to reinforce the stem ends of the boat with fiberglass and epoxy, laying it down directly over the filled, and cured, canvas. This is interesting to us for the additional protection in this high-abuse area of the canoe, but I am concerned about the reliability of the bond between the epoxy and the linseed oil-based filler (even after curing). Does anyone have any experience with this, or is there a better way to protect the ends of the boat?
Fiberglass over filled canvas
- Thread starter Bob Amis
- Start date
Larry Meyer
Wooden Canoes are in the Blood
To me that seems like a recipe for disaster. The canvas has some flex, the glass little or none. I do know that history records that Chestnuts as made have been paddled for thousands of wilderness miles with no such modifications. If you want the rigidity and security of a fiberglass or Kevlar boat, get one. Best insurance against what such a modification is projected to deter would be to become a good paddler: don’t hit hard things you shouldn’t and learn how to land and launch the canoe.
If wear and abrasion under the stem is the concern, I could see cementing on a canvas doubler, then filling that with canvas filler. But if you're trying to beef up the ends against impacts with rocks and such, fiberglass/epoxy isn't going to accomplish that unless it is thick and beefy enough to become an impact spreader - a canoe helmet of sorts. Not sure your daughters going to dig that so much...
A shiny clattery-bangity aluminum canoe, however, would scare the bears away and keep her nice and safe.
A shiny clattery-bangity aluminum canoe, however, would scare the bears away and keep her nice and safe.
Todd Bradshaw
Sailmaker
Fiberglass isn't really all that abrasion resistant. I've seen strip boats that wore through five or six layers of glass on the stems, all the way down to bare wood, after a week of nosing up onto rocky beaches. If you use a flexible epoxy like Gougeon G-Flex, I don't think you'll have flex problems and I think your bond would be decent to well-cured filler, but it can only be as good as the bond of the filler to the canvas. It won't be as good as the bond between epoxy and wood or epoxy and raw canvas would be. About the only fiber material that would make sense to reinforce the epoxy would be strips of Kevlar felt, like they use on stem skid plates for Royalex canoes. It is very seriously tough stuff. Another, somewhat out of the box idea is to coat the area with severallayers of epoxy resin mixed with carborundum grit. They did this for a while on the wooden runner keels on the bottom of Grand Canyon dories and supposedly, they were leaving grooves in the rocks. Not very ecological though.
All in all though, good canvas, good filler and good traditional stem bands are probably going to be hard to beat when you consider all the angles. They seem to have a pretty good extended track record in that area.
All in all though, good canvas, good filler and good traditional stem bands are probably going to be hard to beat when you consider all the angles. They seem to have a pretty good extended track record in that area.
Larry Meyer
Wooden Canoes are in the Blood
Todd has the experience with glass. I think we’re in agreement that the obvious answer comes from asking this question, “why do a field test of an experimental modification over such a long distance when the consequences of the modification failing are so grave and the benefits of the modification so marginal to the success of the trip?” I would never set out on such a trip wondering if the damn thing was going to work. Doing a field fix of a fiberglass failure or damage would be about impossible.
Howard Caplan
Wooden Canoe Maniac
Sig Olsen and his Voyagers popped a leak in one of the their W/C canoes on the first rapid of their Churchill R. trip. This comes from the book he wrote, "The Lonely Land". But, that evening the leak was patched and they went on to complete the trip. A bad one for Sig as he was aging a bit and ended up breaking a tooth and had other things creep up.
I envy her for this upcoming trip as the Churchill is on my list and may well remain there. Make sure she scouts every rapid and identify each and every stem cracking rock prior to the run. But, I would not reinforce a W/C for a trip. I would take a patch kit of some sort, just in case.
Would love to see some pics from the trip!
I envy her for this upcoming trip as the Churchill is on my list and may well remain there. Make sure she scouts every rapid and identify each and every stem cracking rock prior to the run. But, I would not reinforce a W/C for a trip. I would take a patch kit of some sort, just in case.
Would love to see some pics from the trip!
I have added both kevlar felt and ABS 'grunch pads' to ABS and kevlar canoes - not to wood/canvas. An alternative technique to what has been discussed is to have the grunch pad pre-formed, then use an industrial-strength adhesive, like a silicone rubber, to hold the pad on the canoe. I've done this with ABS on ABS and it works fine. Though I haven't tried it, I suspect it would not be so difficult to remove the grunch pad at the end of the trip, though a touch-up to the paint underneath it will be needed. Tom McCloud
Greg Nolan
enthusiast
If you glue something on with silicone rubber, you might be able to get what you attached off, but you'll never get all the silicone off, and you will not be able to paint over it.
peter osberg
LOVES Wooden Canoes
That is a great route to do, and there is plenty of naturally occurring patching material on the way, some of the pine sap patches I have from the churchill river are still watertight after all these years, rather than make your canoe heavy and cumbersome with the dead weight of fiberglass. just plan to patch as needed, you just need any fabric (patch) and some pine gum/fat/charcoal sticky stuff, it hardens nicely and lasts longer than you will
MGC
Scrapmaker
Sage advice. Don't get any silicon on your canvas if you ever hope to paint it again.
Bring duct tape, canvas and Ambroid. That should cover most needs.
Before I put glass (or anything) over canvas I would think about switching canoes....Royalex is good for bashing. Maybe Benson can post the photo of a Royalex OT getting dropped from the roof of the OT factory. It's tough stuff. I had my kayak wrapped around a rock and it popped back to shape after we (four of us) managed to extract it.
Or just be more careful with the W&C. It should be fine.
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I'd like to thank everyone that responded to my question about glassing over filled canvas. I was skeptical about this idea from the beginning, both on aesthetic, but more critically, practical grounds. Your feedback, along with the absence of anyone saying, "Why yes, I've done it many times and it works beautifully", causes me to think that we will abstain from reinforcing the ends with anything more than a stem band and, as Howard said, bring a good patch kit. By the way, I also called the techhnical support people at West Systems/Gudgeon Bros, and they had no experience with this application, either. Thanks, again.
Howard Caplan
Wooden Canoe Maniac
Bob,
This thread is reminding me of another book, Dangerous River by RM Patterson. He set out in the '20's" in search for gold in the Nahanni region of the NW Territories. He traveled with two canoes, one in tow in order to haul all his stuff.
In one of the canoes he lined the bottom and sides with a sheet of canvas. He used the canvas as a tent, rain shelter and to make repairs on his boats. Lot's of loose thoughts as I think about your daughter doing the Churchill in a W/C Prospector.
This thread is reminding me of another book, Dangerous River by RM Patterson. He set out in the '20's" in search for gold in the Nahanni region of the NW Territories. He traveled with two canoes, one in tow in order to haul all his stuff.
In one of the canoes he lined the bottom and sides with a sheet of canvas. He used the canvas as a tent, rain shelter and to make repairs on his boats. Lot's of loose thoughts as I think about your daughter doing the Churchill in a W/C Prospector.
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