The Little Chestnut I bought last week had a fiber glass patch that I removed as it was coming off. This is a late Chestnut, probably a Playmate from the early 70's. Made in the piecework times as opposed to the hourly wage times and it looks like it. The fiber glass patch was covering a knife slit in the canvas. The slit appears to have been made to attempt to repair a plank that had been butted over nothing but the edge of a rib. In other words the end is free and floating and nothing under it to nail to. I can think of no way to repair that sort of problem short of dropping the canvas and replacing some planking. Anyone got any thoughts.
Planking repair
- Thread starter Jan Bloom
- Start date
Dick Persson
Canoe builder & restorer
If the condition of the rest of the canvas covering is reasonable, you could get a little more mileage out of the canvas by placing a fiberglass patch joining the planks and then another patch over the cut in the canvas.
I would say it is in very reasonable condition. The first patch was coming of as the epoxy did not adhere well to the canvas because of the filler. Thinking about this a bit I may try to slide a thin piece (1/8th) of spruce 3" wide coated with epoxy on both sides thru the slit under the canvas. I would proabbly get better adhesion out of the epoxy if I were to wash the surface filler of. Then use a very light fiber glass cloth over the slit rather then the heavy weight the previous owner used. Might be better to make the spruce a bit wider than 3" so that it sits on the planks on either side a bit as well. Room here for thought. Something to think on besides violins and motorcycles.
