Resin saturating the inside of an old Kevlar hull?

I've got a long abandoned Kevlar Mad River Malachite hull. It has a gelcoat bottom that might be salvageable, and a couple small tears to patch. The Kevlar cloth on the interior is very dry, and I feel like the hull has gotten "Soft".

I was wondering if saturating the interior with resin might strengthen the hull? I'm not concerned about adding a little weigh, just giving the boat a second life. I usually use epoxy on boats but as I'm inclined to try Vinylester on this hull. Does Vinylester soak in as well as epoxy?

The flip side is, if its not worth rebuilding a hull like this, what would be the best way to preserve its shape and set it up as a male plug? Thanks, Woody

I have used a low viscosity "penetrating" epoxy to recoat the interior of several Kevlar canoes after the material became dry. The one I have used is System Three Clear Coat. I have also used it to coat the interior of a Bell canoe to eliminate the aggravating "Bell blush" that many were known for.

I don't know that it would stiffen the hull to any extent, but it wouldn't hurt. Is there some reason you are inclined to use vinyl-ester resin?

If the Kevlar is truly rotten or has no structural integrity to it. Then in my opinion soaking it in resin will not fix anything. I just went through this with a Min3. Finally peeled off all the bad Kevlar and laid new on the boat. Which sounds like you could not do from the outside. But may be able to do from the inside?

Got the hull home.

Another hole.

At some point a tree fell on it and it flexed at the Chines.

Here's the interior.

pblanc said:

I don't know that it would stiffen the hull to any extent, but it wouldn't hurt. Is there some reason you are inclined to use vinyl-ester resin?

Click to expand...

The hull received considerable damage, since I had last inspected it, so it looks like in addition to patching the holes, I will have to run a full leangth strip of internal reinforcement along the chines on both sides.

I have a bunch of glass work stacked up on other projects and I will be using vinyl-ester on some of those. I was inclined to use V-E on this boat to preserve the remaining gel-coat, and to use a resin that is hopefully more UV resistant than Epoxy.

The gel-coat is rougher than I thought though, so I may go with epoxy and paint.

One idea I am kicking around is to do a kevlar over foam inner gunwale, and a wood outer. Moveing to the Mid South has been a nightmare as I watch all the wood work fall off of my boats.