In a message dated 9/24/00 11:13:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ppalkiewicz_at_yahoo.com writes: << Greetings, I have Nautiraid kayak whose frame will need a new varnish job done before next season. I am planning to strip old varnish off, and put epoxy instead. Can anyone tell me if this is a good idea? If not, what can I use to restore the frame of my kayak? Pawel Palkiewicz >> Hi, Pawel! Here's a couple of pennies worth of my experience in keeping a folding boat frame alive for about 30 years: 1 - I abuse the boat. 2 - I store it outside for prolonged periods of time assembled (i.e., the boat experiences the full range of heat/cold and dry/wet cycles regularly). 3 - Folding boat frames are subject to a certain amount of chafing, both in regular on-water use and certainly during assembly and disassembly AND transport in its bag(s). 4 - Chafing wears down the best of finishes with time and too often in places where you do not notice. 5 - Epoxy does NOT penetrate wood very well. It creates a strong, durable (non-UV resistant) envelope only. 6 - Epoxy is great at keeping water out, but it is just as good at keeping water in. 7 - At any point where the envelope is not perfect, water will enter the wood and migrate via capillary action along the grain. 8 - Water tends to leave the wood by that same route much more slowly than it entered, i.e., the epoxy wood dries significantly more slowly than it got wet in the first place. 9 - Water in the wood heated (by the sun for example) under such an effective barrier layer as epoxy, will exert considerable pressure and lift the latter off the wood. Eventually the barrier will give way ... not usually obvious to the naked eye unfortunately. See point -7- above. 10 - And all this has led me to stick with boiled linseed oil as a base and old fashioned spar varnish as a finish. The latter I use every few years (sometimes as many as ten between), the former at least once a season on suspect areas. The finish on my frame is not factory fresh, but its integrity is unimpaired. You may also want to check out very practical publications like Wooden Boat and Boatbuilder magazine. I have extensive experience with an epoxy coated tortured plywood kayak where the water migration problem is greatly reduced because of the structure of plywood. However, even in that application immense care must be taken to seal the "end-grain". Good luck! Best regards, Ralph C. Hoehn Ralph_at_PouchBoats.com www.PouchBoats.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Sep 26 2000 - 03:41:04 PDT
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