Re: [Paddlewise] Skinning wooden kayak

From: Kirk Olsen <kolsen_at_imagelan.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 09:45:26 -0400 (EDT)
On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, Scott Ives wrote:

>   Kirk recently wrote that he was planning to reskin a wooden kayak with
> polyester fabric and aliphatic urethane coating.

My baidarka is aluminum but that's a minor detail.

>  Does anyone have any experience with these materials?

A friend uses both regularly.  There are a couple of pictures of his
boats on my web page http://world.std.com/~jkolsen

He gets the polyester fabric from Dyson, Baidarka and Co. (ads in the 
back of sea kayaker magazine)  The aliphatic urethane is made by Gaco.  It's
nasty stuff and you need to use a cartridge respirator at a minimum.
I haven't heard of it being used in a folding application, yet.  If
you try it let me know how it goes.

>   I used Sunbrella for the deck (a nice synthetic canvas, but a bit
> light) and a heavy vinyl for the hull.  I've experimented with hypalon
> in the past, but found it hard to get a really smooth coat. 

Did you thin the hypallon?  I thinned the hypallon, roughly 50% thinner 
(Xylene), for the first few coats.
 
kirk
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Received on Wed Jul 01 1998 - 07:09:24 PDT

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