C-Forum

Now that I have installed wood gunwales on my new Ocoee I need to design/make some end caps.

First of all, I have to add a big thanks to my master wood working buddy/paddler, Doug Green for his his help. We made these gunwales from scratch using raw White Ash stock. This was our first time making and assembling gunwales so we took our time. It took us about nine hours from start to finish, but these things turn out great. The boat has a very nice consistant arc shape from end to end. It also feels lighter and much stiffer in comparision to my old Ocoee with vinyl/aluminum gunwales.

The wood gunwales are about 3" to 4" shorter then the end of the boat. I was think about making the end caps come in about 7" from the bow covering and protecting the end of the boat and 2.5" of the wood gunwales on each end. This gives me about few inches before the bow thwart for carrying.

I need to be able to remove end caps to loosen the wood gunwales in the winter time. So I was thinking of some kind of material that I could heat/shape over the bow and gunwales about 1/2" down the Royalex and attach with a few small bolts with nuts and washers, versus pop rivets.

Any Ideas on a lightweight shapeable plastic material or other material that I could easily shape for this application, yet remain somewhat tough and not crack easily?

Thanks for your input.

Not sure about how it would wrap, but is slippery and impact resistant. It is also easy to work, so you could buy a piece 1 inch thick and router out a channel for the gunwales of the boat as an alternative.

http://www.professionalplastics.com/cgi ... 00/UHMW-PE

Mike

AJ, I faced the same decision a couple of years ago when I retrimmed my Ocoee. I thought seriously about making deckplates out of some kind of plastic: ABS, poly, etc. But because the ash gunnels looked so good, I figured that I'd be doing them a disservice aesthetically by using plastic deckplates.

I looked around at OP Hardwoods, which is where I bought my ash stock, and I found this purple heartwood. It is a beautiful wood and is very dense and hard and is rot resistant. The only downside is that it is very heavy. I had OP plane it down to about 3/8" and I took it home and cut it to shape. I ruined about three jigsaw blades cutting it. I made them about 10" long and attached to the inner gunnels using brass machine screws.

You might consider doing this also. Terry

Beautiful job, Terry!

John

Terry,

Yes, that does look nice, way better then plastic. I was hoping to keep the boat light, but this is worth considering.

One thing about my gunwales is that they are a little shorter then yours, due to a kiln split in the stock that we made them from. So my gunwales end a little further back from the front, 3.5" or so. So I do not have anything to attach to from the bow back to about 3.5". It may not matter with a hard pice of wood like that? I am still thinking about this as I slowly get this boat together.

Back in the day of the viper (and rodeo), people had a similar problem when switching to wood gunwales. The extreme roundness of the ends meant that the gunwales had to be short.

The wooden decks look really good, but proved not very resilient in impact. They also transfer load, from one gunnel to the other. This commonly lead to breakage of the gunwales. And as mentioned there is a weight issue.

ABS plastic sheeting (not to confused with foam core ABS) was resilient to impact and did not transfer load. However the plastic shrank and expanded with changes in temperature. This made them look mis-installed at times, and played havoc on the screws. I’d choose a plastic that was fairly stable to temperature changes. Mad River did use ABS Foam cored decks with success, the same material as the hull. But I don't know where you could find them.

To me, the best I ever came up with was short glass/kevlar deck-plates. You can use black auto trimming for the edges, like that used on helmets. I even laid up some with balsa wood cores, they looked really good.

Jeff Richards (Chattanooga’s) experimented with several cut pieces of High Impact Plastic. I’m not sure of the size he used. But they were somewhere along the lines of ½ inch by ¾ inch. He formed (bent) them into horseshoe shape, and stacked them side by side. This worked well for the Rodeo. They lasted through his repeated beatings (play boating), which was at least weekly and season long.

I wonder if polyethylene would work? You might be able to find an old wrecked kayak or C-1 - an old Slasher would have some fairly flat surfaces (I've used one to make hip grabbers). Color might be a problem. You can buy poly from plastics suppliers and I bet McMaster-Carr.

I'm not sure what plastic cutting boards are made of or how thermally stable they are, but they are readily available, fairly cheap, and a neutral color.