Re: Something to chew on�

Posted by Laszlo on Oct 2, 2006

Hey Gober,

That sounds like the Potomac River up in the mountains - rock bottom with gravel and oyster shells in between. My wife and I ran my pirogue (sort of like a deckless MC 13) through that and came through OK even though we did bounce off some rocks and scraped the bottom.

That boat has a 1/4 inch thick bottom covered with 4 oz glass. All the scrapes & gouges were in the epoxy coating and the glass. None got through to the wood. A little sanding and 3 oz of epoxy fixed it all up.

Something you may be able to do quickly is to cover the bottom with an epoxy/graphite/cabosil mixture. The cabosil adds hardness while the graphite makes it slick enough to slide over rocks which would normally gouge the wood. My wife's 16LT has 3 layers of that mixture on the bottom and it's held up much better this year than last. If you have enough leftover epoxy & cabosil from building the boat, all you need is the graphite, which you should be able to get locally at hardware or boat stores if you're pressed for time. Here's a link to a guy who explains how to use it:

http://tomangelakis.tripod.com/graphite_bottom.htm

Good luck whatever you go with, and remember, you built it, so you can fix it. It's just some more sanding.

Laszlo

In Response to: Something to chew on� by gober on Oct 2, 2006

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