Bell Wildfire RX (Yellowstone) Restomod

[Alan Gage]

What about a thin (1/4") cap that could be placed on top of the gunwales and then shaped after application to blend in.

Alan

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Bondo . . . . Maybe a teak boat deck caulking can that can sanded?

I have no idea whether Bondo or a caulk will adhere strongly enough to the edges of the Royalex to fill the tear-out gaps. If they will, it might be worth a try. I'm quite sure G/Flex would adhere if you "dam up" the inside and outside of the hull with walls of tape or something. Hardened G/Flex can be shaved and sanded. It will be an amber color unless you pigment it with green.

What about a thin (1/4") cap that could be placed on top of the gunwales and then shaped after application to blend in.

As long as water doesn't get trapped between the cap and the gunwales, which I suppose could eventually rot both, unseen.

 

[Jmharrick]

I have no idea whether Bondo or a caulk will adhere strongly enough to the edges of the Royalex to fill the tear-out gaps. If they will, it might be worth a try. I'm quite sure G/Flex would adhere if you "dam up" the inside and outside of the hull with walls of tape or something. Hardened G/Flex can be shaved and sanded. It will be an amber color unless you pigment it with green.



As long as water doesn't get trapped between the cap and the gunwales, which I suppose could eventually rot both, unseen.

I second what Glenn said about using g-flex if just trying to fill the voids. I haven’t thought about pigmenting it, but you could always experiment.

 

[MrPoling]

Cleaning up the exposed Royalex edge:

I'd also be curious if anyone has secrets for finishing the exposed Royalex edge. It looks porous and dirty and just sort of bugs me. I also have tear-out in many places where the old gunwales had been screwed into place before. Those voids will be visible.

I've considered plunge routing a narrow dado slot to receive a filler piece of wood that I could epoxy into place but that seems like a lot of trouble and a recipe for permanently gluing the gunwales to the hull, making . I also don't relish trimming the top of the hull any lower and losing freeboard.

As ghastly as it might sound, I've considered Bondo too. It's color isn't so dissimilar to the Fir, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad? Not sure how it'll look with tongue oil applied.

Maybe a teak boat deck caulking can that can sanded? A clean black stripe in the middle might look crisp.

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I'm really enjoying this thread. I've been through many of the same problems you're discussing, and it took so long to work everything out.

I have left the undersides of inwales square. It works great for mounting seats, thwarts and yokes. I recommend sanding the edge enough it doesn't hurt your fingers when you grab onto it quickly. Otherwise I'm not going to offer any woodworking advice, hopefully somebody who knows more than me will.

I respect that you don't like the appearance of royalex sandwiched between wood. The gaps where the screws were would bother me too. But I encourage you to try to accept it. I'm doubtful you'll find a sound and aesthetically pleasing way to deal with it. This canoe has a history already, and the scars to show for it.

 

[MrPoling]

Sure you can complain. I also learned to double space at the end of sentences in high school typing class. However, I didn't know that the Xenforo software eliminates the double spaces. I'm using double spaces in this reply. If they are eliminated, I'm not aware of any any way for me to change that. One reason why double spaces may generally be unwanted is that each space is, I'm pretty sure, counted as a character and every message here is limited to 15,000 characters (which I can adjust). Allowing more spaces would disallow an equal number of letters, numbers and punctuation marks toward the message character limit.

I read some careful, well reasoned explanation of why double spaces were completely unacceptable, then why they should be banned.

I don't care. Single spaces are harder for me to read. Even uncomfortable with some fonts. It's as bad as someone typing everything in bold. I would be shocked if I'm the only one who perceives it this way.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Single spaces are harder for me to read. Even uncomfortable with some fonts. It's as bad as someone typing everything in bold. I would be shocked if I'm the only one who perceives it this way.

This issue is off topic but I'll make some comments. First, I don't think you'll find double spaces after sentences in many, if any, internet writings including the NY Times.

Second, I agree single spaces after sentences are harder to read.

Third, that's why a lot of internet writers only write in one sentence paragraphs.

Finally, I personally don't go as far as using only one sentence paragraphs. However, for readability and eye fatigue reasons, I believe internet paragraphs should usually have no more than five sentences, although I sometimes violate that rule.

Inadvertently.