On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, Michael Daly wrote: > I was asking some small-aircraft-pilot friends of mine about materials to use > for making a skin on frame kayak (one of them is making three stitch&glue > boats) and they suggested heavy weight Ceconite (dacron). Would this be > good? I've seen a few boats with Ceconite skins, buying dacron is cheaper since Ceconite is a trade name and also needs to meet aeronautical specs. I also know of one builder who had a bad experience with Ceconite. He normally builds with canvas and coats with enamel porch paint. He built a boat with ceconite and porch paint. On the day he first launched it he paddled in some skim ice. The ice cut through the paint (something that didn't happen with canvas) and his boat started to leak badly. He promptly got to shore, then went home and tore the ceconite skin off. If you want bombproof George Dyson sells a 26 ounce double woven nylon that should survive just about anything... Polyester fabric, nylon fabric, canvas are other fabric choices. One person was planning to try a hemp fabric, I haven't heard how the hemp fabric is working out. > They also said to stay away from polyurethanes, especially the two part kinds. > They suggested the polydope stuff would be fine. Any opinions? Opinions on the Internet? 2 part polys work well, zar satin varnish with aliphatic urethane comes out clearer than 2 part poly (less of a tan or gold tone, but aliphatic urethane is tremendously toxic). If you aren't going for translucent hypallon, or enamel porch paint work well, others use regular latex house paint. A few years ago I saw a boat that had epoxy resin over fabric, the resin wasn't flexible enough, it had numerous spiderweb cracks and leaked badly. A non-sewing option for doing a boat is hypallon coated polyester fabric, like what is used for awnings. Reportedly this is "welded" together with solvents instead of sewn on and then coated. I've yet to see one of these in person. kirk *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Apr 13 1999 - 08:01:03 PDT
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