L'Edge re-outfitting question

[Todhunter]

Vertical - one on the front of the saddle, under the front thwart, and one on the back of the saddle, under the rear thwart.

And he means dowel not tubing. solid material so you can screw into it.

Yep, here: http://www.mcmaster.com/#8624k16" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[djutzi]

This is good stuff - thanks everybody.

Any idea roughly how much McMaster-Carr charges for shipping? Its asking me for my credit card info before telling me that...since I'll be shipping to Canada, I want to make sure I'm not paying $20 shipipng for $2 worth of plastic rod...

[sbroam]

Or maybe a piece of PVC tubing with a *cap* that could be screwed into - <$.50 and locally available... or a salvaged bit from something around the house... Legos?

[Todhunter]

This is good stuff - thanks everybody.

Any idea roughly how much McMaster-Carr charges for shipping? Its asking me for my credit card info before telling me that...since I'll be shipping to Canada, I want to make sure I'm not paying $20 shipipng for $2 worth of plastic rod...

I think I paid about $12 shipping. I ordered 2 feet of the HDPE dowel and 2 stainless D-rings for my C1 snap-shackle outfitting - roughly $12 worth of materials and $12 shipping. Just order enough to make the shipping worth it.

[boatbuster]

Great information. Thanks everyone! Re.

"Go to a home depot and buy a boring bit a little smaller than the dowel you plan to use."

I prefer to use an exciting bit :O)

Seriously, another thing that works really well for drilling round holes in minicell is an old broken piece of aluminum shaft from a cheap raft paddle. I have some of these I have cut roughly with a hacksaw and I just turn them into the foam and then pull the plug out of the shaft when they are done. Might work very well for this purpose.

[ohioboater]

"Go to a home depot and buy a boring bit a little smaller than the dowel you plan to use."

I prefer to use an exciting bit :O)

With minicel, I find that just about any bit can get exciting if it grabs

[pmp]

yeah, i never glue my saddle in anymore. yes put a vertical square piece of wood vertical into a smaller round hole. that way when you screw into it the wood won't spin. i use about a 6 inch long piece of wood (no i didn't measure it:)
the secret is though to blue a few 1.5 inch thick pieces of minicell to the hull but tight against the saddle at the front and back. i cut a u-shaped piece that wraps around the sides of saddle a bit. do not glue it to the side of the saddle. you'll never be able to dislodge the block laterally, but still be able to remove saddle if you like.
paul

[milkman]

The seat in my Prelude was coming unglued at the bottom, so what I did to secure the seat was use the metal tube that Mohawk includes with its standard seat design for connecting the seat back to the thwart. The tube inserts into the foam about six inches or so and bolts on to the thwart. I did this only on the seat back to secure the bulkhead and it has been great. I have a few of these tubes from when I didn't use them installing other seats in other canoes ... I wonder if Mohawk would sell them separate from the seat. I don't see it as a separate item for sale on their site, but maybe if you contacted them.

[boatbuster]

Or maybe a piece of PVC tubing with a *cap* that could be screwed into - <$.50 and locally available... or a salvaged bit from something around the house... Legos?

Thanks for the idea...this is what I did with a slight modification. I also followed the boat designer's advice in the first response to this post and re-glued the saddle in the boat. When I pulled it out only about five inches was still glued. No wonder the back was wandering so much. Unfortunately the front was too before I fixed it.

I looked at caps for the 3/4 PVC at Lowe's but they were all rounded on top, which of course would not work because it would still tend to wobble. I found a coupling and a threaded "plug" which I used instead. I cut 8 inches of PVC for both the front and back and drilled through the plug. Then I threaded the bolt through the plug and for security, added a nut on the back of the plug. To keep it from falling down in the saddle if I should ever have to remove it, I stuffed mini-cell up in the coupling and plug before I assembled them. I used my broken aluminum shaft rafting paddle to drill the holes (smaller in diameter than the PVC) and deeper (the previous owner had only a five inch broomstick dowel in the front of the saddle, and it had a huge worn out hole in the middle where the screw had torn up the wooden dowel, so I am glad I did not go that route.

I installed these rods both in the front and back of the saddle and screwed the thwarts down snug. Before I did that I removed the old weldwood and roughed up the bottom with some dragon skin. I did install a few more pass-through tubes while I was in there too (thanks for the idea, Wendy.)

I appreciate the advice everyone shared. I have actually been designing and building my own customized mini-cell bulkhead saddles since before Esquif or Mohawk ever used them. In fact I did my first one, based on the old Perception saddle, before Frankie Hubbard started outfitting Skeeters and Superflies this way. Once I got a Superfly, I refined my technique and made them so the bulkhead portion of the saddle was custom fit to the sides of whatever boat I was putting it in. For this reason, I have never before had problems with the front of the saddle wobbling – because the "wings" are form-fitted and glued to the side of the boat.

Of course the new canoes come with a different type of bulkhead saddle, more like the original Perception model, in that the wings do not attach to the sides. For these saddles, the PVC rod solution seems to work great (combined with gluing the saddle in). I took it out today, paddled four miles of the French Broad and did some rolls and there was zero side-to-side motion!