Disintegrating Caption help!

[avlclimber]

I now consider myself a "beginner/Intermediate" canoe fixer. I'll defer to the experts on this one.

This Dagger caption takes on enough water when paddled to challenge the notion that it "floats." It was purchased for (literally) $30 and may be worth that. I would like it to MOSTLY not leak, and maybe last as long as it can, and hopefully put up with a little abuse, because I'd like to use it for decent tandem runs if I can get this somewhat fixed. That said, some mild leaking and a functional boat would be okay.




There was a identical but inefective patch on the other side. this patch leaks, but I think I can squirt some goop under/around it, it's holding. the crush/gouge in the forground needs to be patched (any ideas?)



This is the one I have no idea about. Under the seeping patch i pulled off is a huge area of hole/rot/delamination/acorns&pebbles. Sections of the ABS seem brittle. A triangular area from the hole, along the chisel to the end of the handle, and back along the chine is all delaminated, and it is raised up .25-.5" from the underlying foam.



this hole pokes through to the inside, and I think that vertical seam on the right seeps, too.



Soooo, do I fill this whole thing with epoxy? How much of the outer layer do i cut away? should I just try and make it water tight and not worry about re-bonding everything?

I have G-flex, but I might need a cheaper filler for that area, it's probably 14" by 12" by 6". the hole itself is probably ~5x5"

Thoughts?

[Smurfwarrior]

Personally, for a $30 boat I wouldn't waste expensive Gflex on it. Go get yourself a pint or two of Rustoleum Bedliner and a roller from Walmart and paint that sucker inside and out at the points of failure. Cheap and very effective.

[ncdavid]

Nathan,
I have some sheets of 1/8" and 1/16" ABS and some ABS cement. It won't be pretty, but I think we can do something with that piece of junk.

[markzak]

If I really planned on using the boat on some whitewater, I would gflex fill in some of those areas, maybe use the filler with the gflex like fiberglass shreds or west system 406 filler. Then I would patch over that gflex spot with a good sized sheet of kevlar cloth or felt, or any cloth really. You can fill in all leaks on old patches with gflex too. I haven't tried the bedliner trick, but it sounds like great idea.. I just dont know if you want to patch it more properly first or if the bedliner is good enough on its own and will distribute the weight of an impact on a soft spot underneath as well as a cloth patch will. There are definitely other repair options though most probably cheaper.

[arhdc]

I have not attempted anything like this but I would fill the holes with tiger hair (long fiber glass filler from an autoparts store) and try covering the whole outside with glass cloth and epoxy. Not pritty but watertight. The bad places I would glass the inside also.

[sbroam]

What NCDavid said. Make a big patch, extending past the bad areas - inside and out. ABS (last time I bought it) was pretty cheap and will flex the same as the rest of the boat - it's the same material... if you need to fill the void between, urethane glue (Gorilla is not the only brand) works.