With all the recent discussion on folding boats, I have a couple questions about refurbishing a Folbot. The boat is an early 70s vintage that my folks have had stored in their garage for a long time. We used it quite a bit as I was growing up and it was always a bombproof almost unflippable boat. I figured this would be the perfect boat to get more of my friends out paddling with me. So I started refurbishing the boat. The hull skin seems to be in great condition. I sanded and recoated all the wood. My problem is that the deck has four tears that start from the corners of the cockpit to the edge of the hull. I remember these formed because the wood gunwales never slid very smoothly over a bead at the top of the deck cockpit. This was always the problem with the boat. It all went together smooth until the gunwales had to go on and it took hours and lots of tugging with soap to get the very last part done. This leads to two questions. With all the experienced Paddlewisers, I figure someone may have already tackled these. 1) Does anyone have a recommendation on fixing the tears? I considered having them sewn at a saddle shop, but there is a fair amount of strain on them while putting the gunwales on. My other idea was to get a hypalon repair kit for a raft and glue a hypalon patch on each corner. 2) Is there a recommended solution for the tight gunwale problem? We always used soap to help them slip on, but even then it was a lot of work and led to lots nasty word and banged up knuckles. We took the boat out on the lake without the gunwales and it really is a pretty fast boat. So it will be fun to have the whole thing back together. Thanks for any suggestions you may have. Scot Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Scot, I'd suggest asking your questions on the User's Forum hosted on Folbot's website: http://www.folbot.com/yak.htm Although the company can't be of much help with regard to the older style boats (combination of ownership change and hurricane that destroyed old records/parts/plans), there is a pretty active group of owners of the older boats and they have lots of experience at restoring them. Sounds as if the deck is stretched pretty tight, so sewing the tears might make that problem even worse. I'd probably try fixing each tear with a patch of material that's sewn and/or glued on top. Can't help with the tight gunwale problem - my old ('67) Folbot is the kit-built (non-folding) model, and my newer ('93) one is the current style that assembles very easily. Scot Hume wrote: > > With all the recent discussion on folding boats, I > have a couple questions about refurbishing a Folbot. > The boat is an early 70s vintage that my folks have > had stored in their garage for a long time. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:31 PDT