repairing a deep scratch in glass / strip canoe

[tomtom]

I have a Freedom 17 built in Ted Moores' class - 3 coats resin on the outside, then 6 coats varnish. I had the boat out and scraped the bottom on some sort of spike which penetrated all the varnish and all the resin to the cloth/wood for a length of about 3 feet. Do I need to redo the glass/resin or can I just sand everything out and re coat with many coats of varnish? Any experience or advice would be appreciated.

tom

[shawnwaite]

i just read on the net somewhere that you shouldn't depend on varnish to fill the voids..

I'm having personal experience with that right now.. i've added 3 coats and it's not touching some of the "dimples".

You may need to add a small batch of epoxy.. but i'm not the expert.

S.

[Jack in Stoughton]

I'd epoxy the wounded area. It's a positive way to assure keeping water out of the core.

[Glen Smith]

Hi Tom, if you attended a class of Ted's maybe you also purchased a recent copy of Canoecraft which contains a section on repairs. If the damage is down to the cloth you will have to use epoxy before varnishing.

[Erich Eppert]

Tom.

I too did that to my kayak. I also repaired a few stripper hulls with the same problem and other damage too. To repair it remove the varnish from the hull about 1 inch on either side of the scrape. Epoxy will not bond to the varnish. The patched area needs to be scraped with a sharp knife blade down to the epoxy. Scraping is easier than sanding and you can control the amount of varnish you remove around the wound.

Sand the area and apply epoxy to the scrape and let it set. Once hard, sand or scrape the area until it is level with the surrounding area. You will not be able to remove the scrape completely but it will not be as noticable. Feather the varnish edges and apply the first layer of varnish. Let harden and apply the next four or five layers until the area has the required thickness. This should take about a week to complete the repair. Buff out the area with fine polishing compound if you are not varnishing the whole boat.

This is a repair for an area not punctured or needing glass replacement. For that repair check out the thread under" Bubbles ". Hope this helps.

Regards, Erich

[tomtom]

Thanks to one and all for your comments. I have my copy of Canoecraft and will get it out.
I originally had a giant "bubble" with the canoe surface at first. Some of the epoxy was not correctly mixed and never cured. So I removed over a square foot of surface epoxy and cloth, resanded the wood clean. Then I patched the whole area with an overlap piece of cloth, three coats of resin. Feathered the edge.
You couldn't tell the difference unless you knew where to look. ( I suspect we all say that sooner or later. ) Then started the varnish.

I figured that it would be needing epoxy if I wanted to do it right. Thanks for the confirmation from you all. Scraping / sanding will start tomorrow.

tom