Wooden Boat People
By McKenzieDriftBoat.com
Wood skid shoe bottom. Thumbs up
I've been away form the site a while gang.... But that is good news because it means I have been hammering the rivers and catching lots of fish!
As some of you know I built a 16'x48" Double ender with transom from Rogers' plans. It is a Meranti boat with a 1/2" fir floor, with a 1/4" fir skid shoe attached to it. Oiled inside, varnished outside. The bottom exterior was oiled to heck, then the skid shoe (also oiled) was installed. After installation, the skid shoe got several coats of down east coating.
I have built previous boats with a 1/2 fir bottom, glassed the outside up to 24 oz cloth with graphite.
These bottoms were nice and slippery but the impact fractures on the interior floor were bad. On skinny water, which we run alot, the bangs on that hard glass bottom were load and the energy transferred to the inner floor.
This new boat has the skid shoe with no glass. I must say I absolutely love it. I have had several trips on skinny water. Guess what, not one impact fracture, no loud bangs and so far I cannot tell the difference in it being "sticky" on rocks. Doesn't feel much different than the glassed bottoms. I love the dampening of hard hits and how quiet it is when you do run skinny water. It is holding up nicely, sure its scuffed, gouged and all, but it is perfectly in tact and doing exactly what I hoped for.
I store my boat dry in my garage but otherwise don't do anything out of the ordinary off the water to it. It is filthy right now and will likely remain that way until late fall.
This post doesn't exactly have a point to it, other than the fact that I've had other boats with the current glassed bottoms, but it is very likely that I will be abandoning that method for the skid shoe on future builds. Its way easier, cheaper and is proving to be more than adequate with a few benefits.
(no interior cracks!)
As some of you know I built a 16'x48" Double ender with transom from Rogers' plans. It is a Meranti boat with a 1/2" fir floor, with a 1/4" fir skid shoe attached to it. Oiled inside, varnished outside. The bottom exterior was oiled to heck, then the skid shoe (also oiled) was installed. After installation, the skid shoe got several coats of down east coating.
I have built previous boats with a 1/2 fir bottom, glassed the outside up to 24 oz cloth with graphite.
These bottoms were nice and slippery but the impact fractures on the interior floor were bad. On skinny water, which we run alot, the bangs on that hard glass bottom were load and the energy transferred to the inner floor.
This new boat has the skid shoe with no glass. I must say I absolutely love it. I have had several trips on skinny water. Guess what, not one impact fracture, no loud bangs and so far I cannot tell the difference in it being "sticky" on rocks. Doesn't feel much different than the glassed bottoms. I love the dampening of hard hits and how quiet it is when you do run skinny water. It is holding up nicely, sure its scuffed, gouged and all, but it is perfectly in tact and doing exactly what I hoped for.
I store my boat dry in my garage but otherwise don't do anything out of the ordinary off the water to it. It is filthy right now and will likely remain that way until late fall.
This post doesn't exactly have a point to it, other than the fact that I've had other boats with the current glassed bottoms, but it is very likely that I will be abandoning that method for the skid shoe on future builds. Its way easier, cheaper and is proving to be more than adequate with a few benefits.
(no interior cracks!)
Views: 144
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Karl Mueller on
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Thanks for sharing. Right now I have a UHMW skid but only after the fact conciderd a wooden one. Probably a bit cheaper.
Does anyone else have experience with these? Does the use of ply eliminate/ reduce the issue of rot resulting from the shrink/swell cycle of the UHMW?
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Permalink Reply by Jonathan on
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I don't have experience with two-ply wood. I too use to have UHMW on bottom and per my previous post I am in the midst of repair.
The fact remains that wood boats require maintenance and the bottom in particular. All bottoms are going to take the hits and some more than other depending on the rivers being run and who is on the oars. No matter what you need to treat your bottom finish as such. Like materials are going to behave better together but someday that 1/4" fir skid or any other material is going to need repair. I ditched my UHMW for a few reasons. 1. thermal cycling in inland west caused it to get brittle and literally break apart. 2. what was left of my bottom had completely shifted and caused the screws to partially crack bottom plywood panel in which it was fastened. I have gone with kevlar/fiberglass/epoxy+graphite layup. I am convinced after layup of kevlar that I will no longer have stress cracking on the inside of bottom of boat. I am also convinced that I will need to turn the boat once every couple of years and re-epoxy however, I don't think I will ever penetrate into kevlar. Adding the graphite has slickened it up but it is not as slick as UHMW. I also considered spray on line-x/rino but although more durable than epoxy in this application I didn't think it provided the level of protection provided by kevlar buildup in particular structural.
No matter what your bottom needs a sacraficial layer it's just a function of price vs. frequency of repair vs. weight. I won't go back to UHMWthough for reasons mentioned.
cheers..Jonathan
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