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Guest
Guest
most of the local canoes I have worked on have had blackened butt ends of thwarts and yokes.
Maybe a water repellent preservative would be a good choice, if only as a first coat, in protecting against mold and fungus
The open grain butt end of thwarts and yokes presents the biggest opportunity for rotted wood. The narrow crevice between the butt ends and edge of the hull is perfect to trap dirt, debris and lingering moisture, hastening bacterial growth at that open grain when the canoe is inverted for storage.
BTW, storing a canoe with wood brightwork outside in proximity to rain splashed dirt is a death sentence for thwarts and yoke. All of the cheap and freebie canoes I have restored have suffered that rotten fate.
I have yet to see a factory canoe with what I considered well sealed yoke or thwart butt ends. That open end grain drinks in sealant, and most manufacturers seem happy to slap on a couple thin coats of varnish and call it good. If that, who is gonna see it, just cut it and stick it in raw.
It isn’t hard to remove the (as yet unwanked) machine screws from a brand new canoe and take out those crosspieces one at a time to inspect and seal.
Don’t be surprised if you find places where a poorly drilled hole barely catches the end of the thwart or yoke. The double hung yoke on a high end Bell tripper had two machine screws that missed the ends all together and two that caught the edge by the scantest fraction of an inch. That boat would have come down on my head toot sweet.
There is no UV exposure on those edges, so I have been sanding off the varnish and coating the butt ends and under-gunwale edge portion of yokes and thwarts with epoxy, but I’m not sure if that is good, keeping moisture (and bacteria) out, or bad, trapping any moisture under an impermeable layer of sealant.
I think good, so far the epoxy sealed ends have held up better over time than scant factory varnish. But some of the canoes I resurrected 10 years ago will need attention soon. The exposed varnish coats mostly, but I’ll be interested to see how the butt ends have faired, and if I only have to yank them out every decade I’ll be happy.
If bacteria and fungus are the butt end’s worst enemies I wonder if some anti-bacterial or anti-fungal treatment wouldn’t be a better first coat soaked in application.
Would epoxy or varnish seal coats adhere after a rot preventive coating of ?????
Or just submerge the last inch of thwarts or yokes in a tub of something for a few days?