Wenonah Canoe Repair - kevlar canoe repair made to look easy

"Let's see you find this kind of canoe info anywhere else on the web!" (personal horn-tooting by Joe)

Since this is a large hole thru the canoe and I have to maintain some semblance of canoe shape, we need to provide a means to do that. I taped plastic over the area I prepped for patching on the outside. My first step of actual patchwork will be inside. The plastic on the outside prevents the oozing of resin through the hull which might deform it and make it bumpy. Plus it would look like an outfitter's 18 year-old employee from the east coast did the actual patchwork. Drive around Ely sometimes and behold some of the "beautiful" patches on so many of those vinylester resin kevlar wonder canoes.

So this is what the hole looked like from the inside to begin with. It was located on the starboard side of the front seat, right next to one of those trademark, rigid, styrofoam ribs.

In order to make a effective, neat patch, you need to trim the ripped up kevlar all the way back to solid, undamaged material. Just like when painting a house, you need to remove peeling paint so the new paint has something solid on which to stick.

Shave off the flaps of kevlar until you get to solid canoe. There are usually more than one layers of material. The flap under my knife blade must go.

Usually, next to the foam and sandwiched in between the layers of kevlar there is excess resin that failed to get extracted. If not removed it can prevent full resin wetting and sort of acts like a broken piece of concrete floating around in there. You never get that in a Souris River. Excess resin makes stuff brittle, not stonger.

I'm digging out excess, cured resin here because I want the good resin to stick to a solid structure like the un-messed-up kevlar and that crappy foam. The excess resin is the result of the initial construction of this canoe using vacuum bagging and the inabilty to extract excess resin under the kevlar right next to the ribs. Sometimes it's REALLY obvious. Must be from a canoe built on a Friday or Monday

This is pretty much it for trimming. You can see the dark foam in the side of the rib. Both flaps of the actual hole are not hanging up on each other but are now coexisting on the same plane.

Now I'm sanding the area just to try to insure a good link up with the epoxy and new kevlar patch that I will be applying.

This is what it looks like from the top down instead of from across the canoe as was in the previous pic. Sand anywhere the patch will go and 1/2" to 3/4" beyond the actual patch size.

To make work easier, I like to get the patch area level so the resin doesn't want to run too far from the patch. Here I used a stick and a saw horse and a swiss army knife - OK, no knife.

Since this is a major hole, I want to reinforce the area with two pieces of kevlar. I cut a smaller one that lays over the hole and then also a bigger on that lays over the top of the first patch. I guess the term is "overlap", but typing lots of words is more fun!

Before I mix the resin, I want all of my ducks in a row. So I cut my final inside patch to size and lay it in to make sure it fits where I want it. My left hand holds a piece of kevlar cloth for those of you who have absolutely no clue where kevlar canoes, army helmets, spaceship parts and bicycle tire reinforcements come from. Kevlar is DuPont's brand name for incredibly strong, non-porous, aramid fibers that can be woven into a cloth. It is not even remotely close to fiberglass. I believe it is more closely related to nylon. And get this - it was discovered/invented by a woman!

Next, I mix up some West System 105/205 resin in a cup and apply it with my gloved fingers. Very easy to use with NO guesswork about how much hardener to put in or anything else. Polyester resin says to put 3 or 4 drops of hardener in it. If the temp is high like when I shot these pics, that poly crap heats up and becomes a hot, smokin' solid if you put one drop too much hardener. One drop too little and it may not want to cure - then what? OK, I admit it...I hate that stuff!