Restoration Advice

[Gary]

I’m in the process of repairing and painting a royalex canoe. I’ve done some homework about repairing damaged areas with GFlex and have seen various recommendations for paint. I have 2 questions:
1). While paint adhesion to royalex seems to be a concern and justification for more expensive paints, there doesn’t seem to be many who recommend primers. Is priming worth the time, expense, weight? If so, what kind of primer? I’m leaning towards using Pettit EX Poxy paint. But, the Pettit EZPrime says not to use below water line.
2). I was planning on removing the gunwales to do a better job painting. But, I’ve also read the cautions/recommendations about drilling the rivets. Carefully drilling the head of the rivet and punching out the rest without enlarging the drilled hole seemed like the best technique. Any strong recommendations against removing the gunwales?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Gary Norman

 

[snapper]

Not sure if this will be helpful or not so here goes...

About 10 years ago we took a Mad River "Explorer" and transformed it into a faux birch bark canoe for use in 18th century re-enacting events. We spoke with the paint guy in our local ACE Hardware (who really was an expert in this area) and Pat recommended that we go with a Rust-Oleum paint as our base layer. We didn't prime the hull in any way. All we did was scrape off the decals and paint. Since we were replacing the rotted gunwales those were off but I don't see where that would be necessary if you could tape them off.

When the time came to create the pitch seams where the bark would have been sewn together, we use a product called Sica-Flex. It definitely flexed and worked very well to protect the hull and give the look we were after.

That's all for now. Good luck in restoring your canoe. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper