Old Cedar Strip Canoe

[Brandon22]

I recently bought a cedar strip canoe. This is my first time trying to restore a canoe. I am thinking that I will need to put all new fiberglass on this canoe. Also I will have to do small repairs to both seats and both bow and stern. I have uploaded my photos to Facebook. You do not need an account to look at these images. Any input on how I should go about doing this would be great.

This is what I have planned please tell me if I should do something different. I first plan to take off the gunwales and decks. Then remove the fiberglass with a heat gun on the hull. Now should I remove the interior fiberglass after this or should I sand the hull and fix any damages that are not repaired on the hull and install the new fiberglass. After that I want to do the same to the interior of the canoe. Once that is done I would like to move the thwarts farther apart inorder to install a yoke. Should I stall a yoke after I have installed the new Fiberglass? Any input would be nice along with links that may be helpful.

Here is the link to the album that will help show the process of the project. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...1&l=2218c70e24


Thank you,
Brandon

[Todd Bradshaw]

First of all, you need to understand that totally rebuilding a tired old stripper is usually more work and nearly as expensive as building a new one from scratch and the results usually don't turn out as nice as a new boat by any means. Unless they're awfully good designs or have some sort of historical or family heirloom aspect, most simply aren't worth the hassle, cost and labor time because much of the work is essentially bass-ackwards canoe building.

Assuming that you still want to proceed, you also need to understand that the fiberglass layers are contributing most of the strength to the hull. If you take too much apart all at once, it well may fall apart. In this case, the gunwales and decks are most likely headed for the dumpster and not terribly pretty to start with. Once they are off, you'll lose a lot of hull rigidity and will need to brace it carefully to keep its shape while you remove and replace the glass on one side (inside or outside). After one side is restored, you can remove and replace the remaining side. Then it's time for new gunwales, new decks and thwarts, seats and a yoke if you want one.

[Brandon22]

Thank you I was also thinking what if I where to sand down the whole thing with a 1000 grit sand paper and apply a new fiberglass over the top. would this be a possibility?

[hokiefan]

I'm no expert so consider what you paid for this advice!!! But looking at your pictures, yeah the decks have to be replaced. The epoxy on the fiberglass looks degraded like there was no varnish over it to protect it from the UV. So sand it smooth, but not off. Give it an epoxy coat or two. Scrub off the amine blush, sand it smooth. Give a coat or 5 of UV protectant varnish. Go from there.

Cheers,

Bobby

[Brian Palmer]

Todd is right. It is not worth the effort to take off all the glass and replace it. Sand lightly and patch the small dings, maybe put a thin coat of epoxy over the whole boat, replace the gunwales and decks, paint it and go canoeing.

Brian

[wizbang 13]

A lot of sanding has been done, to a funky glassing job. Sand it a bit more, 100 grit, not 1000, roll on another WEST resin. It does not need restoring, just a quick fix up.

[Todd Bradshaw]

This would all depend on what you want it to look like when you're done. You have obvious spots where the fiberglass is either delaminated, sanded-into or the boat has suffered impact damage and may or may not have some water intrusion/dicoloration issues on the wood. If you just add resin on top, most of these are not going to go away and the only way it will ever look decent is to paint it. It's also pretty obvious in the photo above that in order to get it smooth without chopping the hell out of the fiberglass it's going to need several more filler coats, followed by a proper sanding job, not just "a light coat of epoxy". Look at the area at the very top of the stem edge in the picture, for example. When properly filled and sanded, the entire hull should have that smooth, light grey-ish look, not the mottled, lumpy look with visible weave hanging out that you see elsewhere in the photo.

Wiz is right about 100 grit. 1000 grit is barely even going to scratch this stuff, but there is no reason to do much sanding until you have enough resin on the surface that you can sand without cutting into the glass fibers that are holding the boat together. So, I guess it's going to boil down to what you're willing to accept as a "restoration". If you're willing to paint it, you can probably patch, add filler coats, re-sand it and paint. However, if "restoration" means ending up with a clear-finished, cedar stripper that looks good, you're going to need to replace the fiberglass layers.

[Canoez]

One thing I'd like to add here - if you're planning on removing large swaths of 'glass, I personally don't prefer to do it by grinding. Makes a mess of sharp airborne glass fibers and requires good protective equipment (coveralls, gloves, goggles, mask/respirator) to protect you from all the airborne glass fibers you are making. If I'm removing large swaths of glass, I prefer to do it with some heat. Acquired a BN Morris canoe that had been 'glassed with polyester resin and fiberglass. I filled the boat with water to soak the planking from the inside out (was marginally effective) and then used a heat gun to remove the resin and 'glass. It was smelly even with organic vapor cartridges in a respirator, but worked pretty well, all-in-all.

[Brandon22]

Thanks for all the help so far. So if I am reading this right what I should do add epoxy to the whole thing then sand it down paint the out side and then add another layer of epoxy. Is this correct.

If I did not do the above and just a layer of epoxy and sand it then do another later of epoxy would I still see the fiberglass?

[wizbang 13]

Repair the epoxy and then proceed from there. start with 100 grit sanding.sand the lumps and drips of resin and the dirty bits. Avoid going into the itchy stuff.
Paint , or bright,

[Todd Bradshaw]

Epoxy can not be the outer layer. The sun will turn it to powder or a gummy mess in less than a season of exposure. It must be protected from UV by a topcoat of paint, or in the case of clear finishes, by a high-quality UV-filtering marine varnish. If you just want to coat it, you sand first to rough-up/clean the surface, roll on a few coats of epoxy (one isn't going to do squat on that rough surface) then you sand the epoxy smooth and paint or varnish over that. That does not, however, fix weak spots or damage to the existing fiberglass and though it will look somewhat better, it's still most likely not going to be a good candidate for a clear finish.

Perhaps the best advice you could get would be a suggestion to buy a good book on strip canoe building like "Canoecraft" (available from our hosts). You have an awful lot to learn at the moment about the process and that would be a much more effective method of learning it than posting random questions on the forum. Stripping isn't particularly difficult and a lot of beginners can turn out really nice boats on their firat attempts, but there are certain orders in which things need to get done and the book would show you that. It would also probably pay for itself in terms of not wasting expensive epoxy resin by making mistakes. Your next canoe will be a scratch-build anyway (after you catch the bug) so you might as well buy the book now.

[wizbang 13]

If a first timer rushes past the epoxy stage and put varnish over it, it becomes almost impossible to go back to epoxy cuz then ALL the varnish needs to be removed.
Sandwiching varnish between epoxy is not good.
The danger of epoxy getting a bit of sun is , imohp, overrated. My ol' two bow boat gets only resin on the outside.

[Tom Robb]

I've watched uncoated epoxy turn to crud in a few seasons. Protecting it w/ a uv resist. coating doesn't seem overrated to me.
And Todd's advice is spot on. Get the book, learn what's involved.
Sadly more than a few here press on regardless and only want their notions confirmed.