• Happy Weed Appreciation Day! 🌱🌿🌻

Cedar strip field repair kit

Joined
Apr 21, 2015
Messages
813
Reaction score
400
Location
Livingston, Montana
I'm curious what others would add to a field repair kit for a cedar strip canoe. Here's what I've got so far:

- duct tape of course
- 2 part epoxy resin
- fiberglass cloth
- peel ply
- small mixing cups
- sand paper

Anything else?

By the way, this would be for a big trip, 2 or 3 weeks out.

Mark
 
Last edited:
I'm curious what others would add to a field repair kit for a cedar strip canoe. Here's what I've got so far:

- duct tape of course
- 2 part epoxy resin
- fiberglass cloth
- peel ply
- small mixing cups
- sand paper

Anything else?

By the way, this would be for a big trip, 2 or 3 weeks out.

Mark

How r ur seats hung? I pack a few screws, bolts and nuts that fit my canoe.
 
Seat frame is epoxied to the bottom, so I'm set there, although I could probably throw in a couple extra screws nuts etc. for portage yoke and foot brace. Thanks.
 
I picked up a roll of the metallic furnace tape, that is used to seal duct work. I've not used it on a canoe, but it sticks great. Just a thought !

The problem with two part epoxies is the long cure time. I'd try and find a Fast Set epoxy.

I guess peel ply, I'd skip, as a plastic bag would do, if you absolutely needed it.

Sounds good so far, a handful of 1 1/2" screws incase you needed to make a big patch on the hull.
 
Good idea with the furnace tape. Of course, I didn't think about cure time with the epoxy. I wonder how regular 5-minute epoxy from the hardware store would bond with the hull? Peel ply is out, any old plastic bag is in. More screws
 
I think the 5 minute stuff would work, but I don't think it would wet out cloth real well, as it seems pretty thick.
 
I take fast and slow epoxy both. I can mix the hardener in any ratio I want to change the cure time depending on ambient temp, how big of a job it is, and how much time I have to wait for the cure. I'm expecting cool temps on my trip this year so I'll bring more fast and less slow. Peel ply weighs nothing and, IMO, works better than plastic bags; I bring it along.

A little alcohol for final surface prep? Maybe any old stove fuel would be good enough in the field as long as you weren't using pre-pressurized cans.

Alan
 
Revised repair supplies:

- gorilla tape
- 2 part epoxy resin (I ordered some fast cure hardener from Raka today)
- fiberglass cloth
- peel ply
- small mixing cups
- sand paper
- assorted screws
- denatured alcohol stove fuel for surface prep
 
I don't want to discourage you from being prepared but the only thing I ever took to repair the hull on my stripper was duct tape. Unfortunately I had to use it after floating a fast shallow section that I should have waded. One application of tape lasted three days untill the end of my trip and I don't think it leaked.
 
I'm hoping that I won't have to use anything, but I'm doing a couple more trips this year that will go 2 or 3 weeks each and won't see many people. It will be a pretty small kit when I'm finished, the size of a baseball., living somewhere down in the bottom of a pack and forgotten.
 
I'd have to agree that Duct tape (Gorilla). Is the #1 repair item in your list. It has soo many other uses.

​Jim
 
If nothing else a small repair kit is good for peace of mind on longer trips. I wore through the stems of my stripper a little over halfway into a 30 day trip last year. Probably could have gotten by with duct tape but it was nice to get out the fiberglass, epoxy, and peel ply to fix it up a little more solidly for the rest of the trip.

I carry a few little plastic shot glasses for mixing epoxy. Last year I actually carried my epoxy in large, capped, syringes. This was a quick and accurate way to dispense and measure at the same time. I carried it all in a 48oz Nalgene bottle (silo). The fully loaded syringes take up quite a bit of space though (long) so this year I think I'll store the resin and hardener in plastic bottles and just use the syringes for measuring it out from there.

Oh, and gloves. You'll want gloves so your hands don't end up a sticky mess. And a couple small brushes for applying resin to cloth. I also carry one of those epoxy sticks you buy at the hardware store in case I need to plug/fill a hole. Easy to use; just break off a chunk, knead it together, and it sets in something like 10 minutes.

20150905_001 by Alan, on Flickr

20150905_010 by Alan, on Flickr

20150905_008 by Alan, on Flickr

20150906_001 by Alan, on Flickr

Alan
 
I used a strip of gorilla tape to repair a 1-inch rip in my thermarest 12 years ago while out on a winter camping trip. At the time I thought it would be a temporary repair, but it's still there and the pad has never leaked. Amazing stuff. At this point I consider it the permanent repair.

I remember seeing your repair pictures and description before Alan and they were in my mind when I started this thread. Of course! a couple small brushes. I had already thought about the gloves, I have a couple pair in my first aid kit. I've seen the epoxy stick stuff before, I'll check it out.

Here are the graduated cups I use, 1-oz. capacity. I can do a really small batch if necessary, down to 7.5cc's. But even with these I seem to occasionally need a way to make even a smaller batch. I hate wasting epoxy. The syringe is the solution.
51aweq6DP2L._SL1200_.jpg

Mark
 
Back
Top