Hull fairing matl.?

[Rollin Thurlow]

I guess I don't see understand this attraction to creating a 30" long glue patch. The glue patch is intended NOT to move and the wood hull it is attached to is intended TO move. The bond between the old, oiled wood is questionable and the feather edges of the glue can be very weak. The glue patch would be perfectly reasonable if it was just a very small localized area. Filling glue across planking seams and fillling and covering up tack heads is never a good idea in a wooden hull that is designed to have lots of movement and whos shape can change with humidity.
Replacing a rib in a wood and canvas canoe so the hull is smooth and fair is not the most difficult of task to accomplish. There are plenty of books that discribe the process in detail and its been described in this forum many times using many different methods.
If the boat is intended to be a show boat of excellent quality, repair the boat as it was intended to be built. Save the questionable short cuts for a lesser quality canoe.

 

[chris pearson]

Youre right

Rollin is right, no doubt about it, I added wood to the outside with West System over it, plain and simple, I didnt take the time to do it the right way but perhaps It'll last my lifetime anyway. This dead horse is officially beaten and I apologize for the redundancy.

 

[Fitz]

Dead horses and bulges

Chris,

I really appreciate the post. The comments are great and that's why the forum is such a good learning tool.

FWIW, I decided today that the bulges were not gonna come out of Godzilla without two new ribs. So I pulled both ribs (took about ten minutes), milled two new ribs, got the steam box out, fired it up, cooked ribs, only to find my fire went out, recooked ribs, bent one backwards (Chestnut bevel and taper), reversed ok and bent it, tried to bend the second rib, but I broke it, (this is a first for me after bending many ribs, I was rushing things to get the kids!!!), so then I milled a third rib and we will try again tomorrow.

So, methinks you are ahead of the game. I do think my bulges are history now though!

Post some pictures, we have to see your project!

Cheers,
Fitz...

 

[Todd Bradshaw]

Well, never having replaced ribs I looked through the archives and they were interesting, but not completely helpful in this situation. If Chris had pulled the rib, are the chances pretty good that a new rib could be used to force the planking back into a fair shape or would the low spots in the planks also likely need to be cut out and replaced?

Something that deserves mentioning though, is that bonding to old oiled wood is not particularly difficult with epoxy resin. The reason is pretty simple. Oil doesn't soak into most wood anywhere near as far as most people think it does. You can test it for yourself. Take a hunk of cedar and slather it repeatedly with the oil of your choice until you're convinced it won't take any more. Then let it dry for a few days and take a sander to it. You'll find that in a matter of seconds you're back down to clean, un-oiled wood. Even the thin, penetrating marine oil finishes like Deks Olje #1 stay very close to the surface and sand off quite easily. Those oils designed to polymerize in the wood's surface, like Watco, may indeed generate a tougher surface than plain wood and be somewhat more difficult to sand, but it's not due to increased penetration. If you do come across previously oiled old wood and need to glue it with epoxy, a little sanding should generate a good gluable surface without much work. In this case, our epoxy bond only needs to exceed the grain strength of the cedar, which is as strong as that particular hunk of wood can be. That's not much of a challenge for epoxy resin.