Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

What would Dave Do?

Here's a question for DaveZ and the rest of you all. So finally after sitting a week in the yard under a tarp upside down the snow and rain stopped the sun came out and I decided to give the boat some TLC. I painted the bottom again to cover all the scratches from 3 days of floating and hitting a few rocks. The outside looked okay, and I figured by painting I'll know where I hit rocks or scrapped the bottom on the next trip. Then I flipped her over and boat souped the inside, here comes the issue.

I noticed two cracks/fractures in the inside bottom of the boat, next to splines in the center middle of boat. Quite probably a result of hitting rocks as it is the low point of where the boat rides in the water.

What should I do? Do I need to shoe the bottom of the boat? (it's only 3/8" plywood now) Can I try to glue or epoxy the inside bottom where the cracks are? Thanks guys for all the help. Kinda worried about it, especially since I've named her and all. Here's a few pics of the cracks.

Mark

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sandy Pittendrigh on April 29, 2010 at 8:08am

RE> patching the crack

Sand that area inside and out. Get some unthickened resin into the crack somehow.
Flex the bottom if you have to. Inject with a turkey baster. Then laminate a bit
of fiberglass over top, on the inside. You'd have to do the outside as a separate operation,
at a later date. Then cover the patched area with visqueen. Lay a block of plywood over
top the visqueen. Now drive screws through everything, perhaps with a temporary block
underneath the boat, in order to pull the crack tight while the resin cures.

Now do that deja vu all over again from the outside, a few days later.

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Permalink Reply by lhedrick on April 29, 2010 at 1:35pm

Sandy, what are you doing over here?

I just don't know about what people would do without glass. Have never understood the idea of oil finishes. Not saying anything negative about them, I just don't know. Seems like the wood would get all gunked up sand and fish slime. But, it must work since everyone keeps doing it.

It's a good thing I found your site first or I would never have figured out how to glass stuff. Now days I glass everything. I could fiberglass just about anything to anything else.

Thanks dude.

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Permalink Reply by Robb Grubb on April 29, 2010 at 11:56am

Mark,
Sounds like a perfect excuse to build another one...better, with all of the suggestions from the guru's incorporated into it. Run your current boat 'til she drops! Then it can be turned into a restoration project, as the cycle goes...
Cheers, Robb

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Permalink Reply by Greg Hatten on April 30, 2010 at 11:26am

OK - I'll weigh in....
I built my boat with the intention of running mostly local Class I and II water chasing Steelhead and Trout. When I branched out and started running rockier water, I started busting up my boat a little bit. Here's how I went about repairing the bottom (I've repaired 4 or 5 holes that were bad enough they took on water)
Here's the most recent hole

On the river, black duct tape worked great to finish the 20 miles of river til I could get it back to the garage/shop.

Back in the shop I did the interior first - sanded down the area all around the cracks, put a coat of epoxy on it and used a blow dryer to get it into all the cracks and crannies, after it dried I put on another coat or two and then put a patch of glass cloth over it and one more layer of epoxy. Turned the boat over and did pretty much the same thing to the other side.
After so many patches, I added a layer of black Durabak-18 that Randy is using on the interior of some of his boat bottoms these days... cool stuff and very water-repellent (and hides that "quilt" look).

If I put one or two more holes in my boat bottom, I'll put a new bottom on it and I would probably go to Fir instead of Sepelle. I think Fir would be a better wood for the kind of water I'm running... or maybe I should just run that water a little better and miss those rocks that keep getting in my way. Hope that helps a little.
GH

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Permalink Reply by mark hilbert on May 1, 2010 at 6:52am

Wow lots of great responses with many different ideas and as AJ pointed out in another topic people weighing in from both sides of the drifter building community. But as those who have read any of my previous posts I built this boat as an inexpensive first boat project with hopes of learning some tricks before building another. Now that she's done and has hit the water I could leave the raft in the shed most of the summer and just run the woodie! I am more concerned about how she will hold up on a trip by trip basis more than how many years she'll last. Will hopes of taking her on a few multi-day trips this summer and having to trailer all over the west to float her I was looking for a little re-assurement that my non-marine plywood boat wasn't falling apart and I could continue keep loading her on the trailer.

As for the fix- I think I'm gonna just oil the @#$% out of her, put her back on the water and keep banging the inevitable rocks. I may look into doing the router fix, but don't really want to start patching the pretty inside bottom of the boat yet, especially if more and more cracks are going to happen. She's flipped upside down in the yard now. I can see that the bottom is in tack, and she was holding water when we took her off the river, so I'll let her be for the time being. I don't really want to glass the inside of the boat or put a shoe on either so she'll have to float or sink as she is, who knows come winter what I'll do to her.

New question for you all. What goes into a wooden boat repair kit? I'm thinking mre 1/4" or 3//8" ply for patches, maybe some 2-part marine epoxy, duct tape, and definately some Crown Royal.