Tripping with an 18ft

[Melthias15]

I recently aquired an 18ft 1920 OT Otca from a guy down the road. He said it came from a canoeing camp (Boy Scouts?) in Southeastern NY, ring any bells? There was a fair amount of cracking in the paint, probably from the filler getting too old. I took my parents out with it last week and had some slow leaking. Since then I have put three coats of deck enamel paint on it and let is sit for 7 days in some of the best weather we have have for a while. I also scraped out the interior as best i could to get rid of some of the old varnish, leaving a fair amount of the blackened varnish attached. After two coats of oil, I took it out with my girlfriend to see if the paint had taken care of the leaks temporarily, and I had no more problems with water penatration! Unfourtunatly, when i buped a log it scraped off a line of the new paint. Even though it had been a week, I guess that the paint was still not completely dry. Now it is drying form its first coat of varish on the inside, with the next one due in a couple of days. In the meanwhile, I figured I would get some imput on my strategy.

There is a fair amount of broken ribs/planking, but not enought to render the canoe unusable. My plan is to finish varnishing it and use it in July for a two week trip in the Adirondacks. This is my first WC, so any tips on tripping with one would be appreciated. My approach with this canoe is mostly utilitarian, and any work that is purely cosmetic is something I don't have time for this summer. Is there much of a advantage in totally stripping blackened varnish, other than looking good? It may be that this winter I recanvas and repair the wood, as well as really strip the interior.

 

[Melthias15]

Here are some pictures of the varnish etc.

 

[Greg Nolan]

The time to strip the interior is when recanvasing and repairing the wood, not now. Further, any additional varnish you put on now will have to be stripped later, with little benefit now, since you have already put on two coats of oil and one coat of varnish. I would do no more to the interior -- more is not likely necessary given the relatively small amount of use you are planning for this summer, and will only add to the work of stripping this winter.

Paint rubs off, even when thoroughly cured and dried, when you bump or run over things like underwater logs and rocks -- the three coats of paint you have already applied should be sufficient to keep water out for this season -- touch up the scrape and don't worry about it if no leaks develop. The new paint you applied should have filled cracks enough to keep water out.

However, new paint will hold only as well as what it is covering -- it will not keep old paint/filler on the hull if the old stuff is unsound and ready to flake off. I would take a couple of day excursions just to be sure that the old paint/filler is holding onto the canvas, as it well may. With paint and touching up, I kept a canoe with several broken ribs, some broken planking, and cracked paint/fill in service for five years before starting restoration, because the underlying paint, though cracked, did not flake off. Like you, during those years I had time to paddle but not to undertake significant repairs -- though I did do some decorative painting:


See the discussion at < http://forums.wcha.org/showthread.php?12094-Huron&p=62206#post62206 > and take a look at some of the links in post 7 of that discussion.

And you should have a roll of good duct tape with you on your two-week trip -- which I presume will be on flat water, not white water.

With broken ribs and planking, you will want to be careful about how you load the canoe -- you don't want to put a point load on or near damaged wood -- as much as possible, pack in soft packs/water-proof bags rather than hard boxes or other containers, in order to spread weight over a greater area of the hull. Indeed, if you pack heavy, you might consider building a floor rack, which will spread any weight over a greater area of the hull, and will keep gear out of any water that might seep in.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[Melthias15]

Large portions of the trip will be on lakes, but a fair amount will be on a river (on the NFCT from Long Lake to Union Falls Pond). There are some rapids, but I do not intend to try to run anything above a class 1. Depending on the river, we may try and line where it is safe to do so. I have read the post that you directed me toward, and found it helpful. As for stripping the interior, would it give a lot of advantage in terms of preformance, or would it mainly be for the purpose of having a beautiful canoe?

 

[MGC]

Large portions of the trip will be on lakes, but a fair amount will be on a river (on the NFCT from Long Lake to Union Falls Pond). There are some rapids, but I do not intend to try to run anything above a class 1. Depending on the river, we may try and line where it is safe to do so. I have read the post that you directed me toward, and found it helpful. As for stripping the interior, would it give a lot of advantage in terms of preformance, or would it mainly be for the purpose of having a beautiful canoe?

When you carry from Stony Creek to Upper you will begin to appreciate the benefit of a dry hull. You will probably notice that your boat will weigh more at Indian Carry than it did at Racquette Falls. By the time you cross route 3 you will be looking for a place to leave it...

Just kidding. Well, not entirely. These boats can take on weight as you go. The varnish and good canvas and paint really make a difference in how water logged they get.

 

[Greg Nolan]

I have no experience stripping the interior of a canoe while leaving the painted/filled canvas in place, and find it hard to imagine doing it without affecting the exterior, or without stripper seeping in between the planking and ribs in a way that would make removal of the stripper very difficult. I don't see any reason to strip the interior now.

MGC is correct that your canoe will gain weight from the water absorbed by wood and canvas along the way -- and varnishing/oiling the wood will mitigate such absorption, but I think you have probably done as much as is now practical in that regard -- I doubt that yet another coat of varnish will help further in that regard. Most of the absorption will occur at the interface of the planking and canvas, from water that will inevitably seep through the ribs and planking.

Later on, stripping old varnish/paint/oil from the interior has the advantage of giving new varnish a sound substrate -- your old blackened varnish and/or oil is not only unattractive, but is probably degraded physically/chemically. It shouldn't cause a problem for now, but if you are taking the trouble to recanvas the canoe, I would strip the interior and refinish it at the same time. (At present, the canoe pictured above has its canvas removed, and I expect to start a thorough renovation in July after Assembly, beginning with stripping the interior.) Since you will be replacing ribs and planking, having the entire interior be bare wood will lead to a better interior finish at the end of the process. Also, once the canvas is off, and before the new covering is installed, many will coat the exterior of the planking with oil or varnish to minimize the absorption of water.

I wouldn't worry about taking the canoe through class 1 rapids. The trip sounds like fun.

 

[Melthias15]

I hear you about the wood absorbing water. When I went out for a paddle when there were still leaks, it got REALLY heavy when we took it out. I kind of wish I could figure out how many pounds it had actually gained. I knew that there would be some weight gain over time, I just hope that the varnish and paint will keep it down to a managable level. Also, I am assuming leaving it right side up on land will help some of that moisture escape. And hey if be carrys end up being an all day event, then so be it, we aren't trying to cover ground super fast anyway. Thanks for the tip on leaving the varnish for now, it sounds like you saved me money now, along with elbow grease when it comes time to strip the interior.

 

[Greg Nolan]

I believe that canoes are most often inverted at night while tripping. Any accumulated water can run, or at least spread, down an out, allowing the wood and canvas to dry a bit overnight, as opposed to moisture collecting and accumulating at the bottom of the hull between the planking and canvas. And should there be rain at night, or a very heavy dew, the inverted hull will stay dry rather than serving as a collection basin.

Canoes beached for the night at Lobster Lake, Maine, on a trip led by guides Garrett Conover and Alexandra Conover Bennett

Long term inverted storage on the ground will foster stem rot, but overnight storage on a trip shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Melthias15]

Ok, so if it is nice and sunny I may let it dry upright, but otherwise I will flip it for bad weather and at night. Thanks for the tip on dew collection, hadn't thought of that.

 

[robin]

Here's what I did in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park. Windbound, but the canoe had seen some rain, so I leaned it into the wind and sun and then did what alot of retired guys do at 2pm....took a nap. I always flip it over and tie it tight to a tree at night.

 

[Fitz]

Weight is all Relative. Personally, if I lost 30 pounds, the boat would be lighter. Just ask Einstein.

 

[rpg51]

I always flip it over and tie it tight to a tree at night.

Me too. I once spent a half day searching Lobster Lake for a canoe that was flipped but not tied off overnight on that very beach depicted above on Lobster Lake. It was just about as calm as it looks in the picture. Looks to me that those boats in the picture are not tied off. Won't make that mistake again. It is habit for me now - no matter the circumstances when my boat gets rolled for the night it gets tied off, every time no matter how safe it looks.

 

[Melthias15]

I am leaving for the trip on Thurs and the paint on the canoe can still be peeled with enough pressure from a fingernail. It occured to me that perhaps the last coat was an oil based paint and this water based paint is not sticking for that reason. It still smells like the paint is still drying, so it could be that. At this point, I have no real choice but to go in the trip and probably watch strips of paint peel off at every corner. Any leaks that result will be fixed with ambroid glue or duct tape, I just with that the paint was hard and stuck to provide more resistance to abrasion.

 

[Greg Nolan]

Did you scuff sand the old paint before repainting? The yellow paint in my post above was water-based over what I presume was oil-based, and while some of that new paint paint rubbed off on unseen rocks that kept jumping up from river bottoms to attack the canoe, none of the paint ever peeled off.

You might bring a small amount of your paint with you. If you develop a small leak from a small crack, a dab of paint at the end of the day may solve the problem. But if you do have problems with paint actually peeling and causing leaks, I would probably use duct tape rather than Ambroid for a temporary repair. The tape can be readily removed after the trip, making any permanent repair a bit easier. I would only try Ambroid if the duct tape didn't work. Ambroid can be removed readily enough by sanding or with acetone, but removing tape is easier yet.

 

[Melthias15]

I scuffed with a random orbital sander before painting. I didn't wash off the powder, but wiped off a fair amount of it. The paint seems to peels regardless of the location on the canoe, scuffed or not. On a hot day, I can smell the canoe from 6ft away, so it seems that it definatly is not dry yet.

 

[Greg Nolan]

Most paints continue to cure for some time after they dry, that is, after the solvent (water or petroleum) have evaporated. Some things that can affect the speed of curing are temperature, humidity, or contamination (from air or, more likely, from something on the painted surface).

If all three coats of paint peel off together, it is likely that for some reason the paint didn't bond well to the old paint, even though you sanded.
Perhaps there was a residue of wax or something else that remained even with the sanding. If that's the problem, the paint will likely continue to peel even when cured.

If the new paint is just soft, and readily scrapes off, but doesn't actually peel off, it sounds like it hasn't cured properly. More time may take care of things. That could either be from a contaminated surface, or just plain bad paint. Most paints will be largely cured after seven days of good weather.

I would wonder about the paint you used. My usual experience with water-based paints (mostly with house interiors and exteriors) is that they dry quite fast, and then also cure fairly rapidly, and I would not expect a strong odor after a week of outdoor curing -- I would expect almost no odor after a day or two. That was my experience with the Benjamin Moore porch and deck paint I used on the yellow canoe above -- I was in the water two days after painting, and on one occasion, I was in the water the very next day after a bit of touch up, with no problem.

But I have had two poor experiences in the recent past with water-based paint. My daughter painted her bedroom last year with some Valspar paint bought at Lowes, and it smelled strongly and with a foul odor for quite a while -- more than a month, although it dried in a matter of hours. That was clearly the paint -- there was nothing wrong with the old painted surface. Being paint on a bedroom wall, it has not suffered any abuse and it is still sticking to the wall -- but I won't use that paint again. And a bit more than a year ago, I used a Valspar porch and deck paint, also from Lowes, that was supposed to be good for concrete and other outside flat surfaces, and it has peeled badly, even though the underlying surface was clean and apparently sound. The peeling began almost immediately, and it is now well more than half gone, and peeling continues. You know what brand of paint, and where, I will never buy again.

So I suspect that either there was some residue such as wax (a silicone wax could be particularly problematic) that was not completely removed from your hull by the sanding, or that there may simply be a problem with the paint you used.

Either way, I don't think there is anything you can do in the next day or two. Keep the duct tape handy, have a good trip, and see how things are in a couple of weeks.

 

[Melthias15]

Thanks a bunch for the info. You are right, can't do anything now except enjoy the trip!

 

[Melthias15]

Well, we all made it through alive, and only a bit worse for wear. Man, that Raquette Falls Carry was TOUGH!. The only damage other than some paint peeling, was a tiny hole that I managed to punch through the canvas and planking. That got a quick treatment of ambroid glue, and all was well. After driving through a rainstorm on the way back, I weighed it to discover that it had gained 35lbs to bring it to a total of 110lbs! Right now it is sitting in a barn covered with the recently removed canvas, waiting until I will have time to work on it more. I expect to talk to many of you again in a different thread once I start seriously working on it.

 

[MGC]

Man, that Raquette Falls Carry was TOUGH!.

One of my proudest and also happiest moments was at that carry. I was ecstatic the first time my older son put our second canoe on his shoulders and took off up the hill with it. It made my Morris feel like a feather knowing that I only had to do the carry once and with one boat.

Did you really think that it was worse than Indian Carry (the one from Stony Creek Ponds to Upper)?

 

[Melthias15]

For sure. Indian Carry was just as hard as Raquette Falls, but we also did it two days after The Falls, and had a hard day of paddling in between the two. As for the terrain, Indian was mostly flat, minus the big hill in the beginning, as well as being slightly shorter.