C-Forum

I know that some plastic boat makers sold bow and stern "cones" to mount on boats to protect the ends.

Well I have a brand new glass boat and am wondering if anyone has done anything similar to protect the bow and stern. Seems an awefull shame just to pound into rocks. I was thinking of using some black ABS plastic pipe and ABS cement, dissolving it into a sticky black mess and "painting" it on the ends untill it was somewhat thick. Maybe even make a wood "plug" and test it out before actually putting it on the boat. Any ideas...

First off, what kind of new glass boat did you purchase. Are you a slolam racer?

I have noted that racers will sometimes take a peice of kevlar, the thick kind that is used for grunch kits, and glass in a bow protectioin. Please use latex gloves and a respirator whenever you work with this stuff

I have an old Noah kevlar boat that I laid up some fiberglass and resin on to protect an already worn area.

If you can get in touch with Sir Adam or EZ Water, these guys know a lot about glass boats

Chuck

First of all, we don't "pound into rocks".

Most glass layups have extra material on the bow and stern to take the expected wear. Once the boat is really well broken in , we just do what local repair is required. That's the nice thing about FRP - you can fix it.

A friend has a 14 yr. old glass boat which has a few patches on the bottom and is still going strong. He set the boat in a slightly vertical pitch. In the bow from around the waterline roughly to where it levels out filled the groove inside the boat with resin and then layed in strips of kevlar. He's never had to do any repair work to that area but then again he's real good at missing rocks by a half inch.

Can you lay up a few layers? Yes..should you, well, I'll agree with Bob here...you'll find pretty quickly that avoiding the rocks IS possible:) Will you hit some? Yes. Will the boat be fine? If it's a good layup, yes. I don't hit rocks intentionally, but I've grazed over more than a few....

What I HAVE done in my WildWater boat is made a "grunch pad" on the stern (bow is very long and boyant...run a drop, bow goes down, then up, driving the stern into what ever is causing the drop....) Undersaturated kevlar felt seems to be most popular, though there are other methods (I used one of the others...and will use an undersaturated kevlar pad next time...some put a layer of neoprene between said pad and the boat right on the stern (the outside kevlar will flex (being Kevlar, and undersatuated with resin) and compress the neoprene instead of the boat...in theory anyway...).

Regardless, have fun:)

Chuck-I think Shawn was getting a glass Atom from class 5, based on what he said at the Armada- I paddled Vann's a few weeks ago and I really liked it -

Shawn, I wouldnt do anything until you need to. Just my .02

Bill