• Happy International Mermaid Day! 🧜🏼‍♀️

If it's fuzzy....

Joined
Nov 14, 2018
Messages
1,309
Reaction score
414
Location
Heart of the Shawnee Nation
If a skid plate gets fuzzy when sanded, it ain't installed right - not saturated with epoxy before application. Properly installed skids sand super smooth with an orbital sander. Just sanded one I installed years ago.
 
Last edited:
In my limited experience, if it is a kevlar felt skid plate, it will be like sanding kevlar and it will fuzz.... I guess if there is lots of resin, it might sand smooth until you reach the kevlar but after that I'm sure it will fuzz!!
 
Every instruction sheet I've seen in skid plate kits says to "soak" the plate through, applying resin to both sides. My Wenonah factory installed skids are not fuzzy, nor can sanding them make them so. The purposes is to provide a HARD surface, not a soft one, when fuzz indicates.
 
All these are sanded well into the felt.
 

Attachments

  • D3BEEF25-2165-4C35-A2AA-D2A5723D6DCE.jpeg
    D3BEEF25-2165-4C35-A2AA-D2A5723D6DCE.jpeg
    333.1 KB · Views: 1
  • 7B8575E4-4257-4E47-BB6D-4D8D661CDE11.jpeg
    7B8575E4-4257-4E47-BB6D-4D8D661CDE11.jpeg
    173.4 KB · Views: 0
  • B91C1315-D8C3-449B-BBD9-7C00DA9D9B93.jpeg
    B91C1315-D8C3-449B-BBD9-7C00DA9D9B93.jpeg
    247.2 KB · Views: 0
Consider the alternative. Too much resin and it wont fuzz if sanded into.. But hit a rock hard and it will just break.. Been there done that. In Wabakimi on a five week trip with the only way out a long paddle or an airlift
 
There is two types of Kevlar. 29 and 49. Maybe the difference lies there ? The Ballistic cloth 29 may be tougher to work with, when wet !

The hulls I've built with 49 Kevlar cloth, exhibited Fuzzies, where I trimmed the shearline. I Used a 4" Grinder with a cut off wheel. It cut very nicely, but did fuzz some. A few little strands that I whittled on, before adding gunnels.

The Kevlar cloth was definitely saturated.
 
The only times I have managed to sand (or cut, or even drill) epoxied kevlar felt when it has not gone fuzzy was with skid plates installed so resin rich that the top surface was a bumpy field of resin globules, or when someone had slathered more resin atop cured rough surfaced kevlar felt skid plates in a heavy weight effort to smooth them out.

But in those cases I wasn’t actually sanding the kevlar felt, I was just sanding resin.

A “properly installed” (if there is such a thing) kevlar felt skid plate would have peel ply over the wet resin, both to smooth out the otherwise rough surface and to help “saturate” the felt without using excess resin.

From my experiences repairing busted kev felt skid plates YC is correct, every felt skid plate with pieces busted out I have worked on was obviously installed overly resin rich. Folks buying $100 felt skid plate kits often used every ounce of the too much resin provided. Very often, and that is not a case where if enough is good more is better.

I would trust a reputable manufacturer not to use excess resin. Not sure why manufacturers are still using kevlar felt as factory optional skid plates, or why they are not peel ply smoothing them or pigmenting the resin. Nor why anyone would order that option knowing what they were going to receive.
 
Yep I fell in the if a little is good more is better back in '91! Had no clue about peel ply or even if it existed them. Used Saran wrap and the skid plate cured replete with wrinkles from the wrap.. an indication if I had paid attention to the mantra less or none is more.
 
The Kevlar cloth was definitely saturated.

FWIW, a couple photos and inspection results from the skid plate materials impact and abrasion experiment.

I laid down some of the (five) kevlar felt test materials resin rich, some less so, some pigmented. All test pieces were laid on a flat-ish surface, not a canoe stem where excess resin is more likely to drip off the sharply curved edges, which would only make some of the resin saturation surprises worse.

P3130003 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P3140005 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

I slathered a coats of resin, some thick, some pigmented, on the vinyl siding test surface, laid pieces of kevlar felt on the resin bed and laid down topcoats of black pigmented resin, again, some resin heavy, some lighter.

No question that the resin rich pieces of kevlar felt suffered more impact damage than the more reasonably epoxied ones.

P3170001 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P3280003 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

The more lightly/reasonably saturated kev felt did not shatter on impact as badly.

P3280005 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

All of them, as seen above, fuzzed when actually sanded down into the felt.

Even more strikingly, and kind of startlingly, when I removed the test pieces from the vinyl substrate, the un-peel-ply compressed pieces showed areas of resin starvation on the bottom, especially where there was some molded slope to the vinyl siding, allowing the resin to creep down.

P3190005 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

I had never actually seen much of the resined bottoms of kevlar felt, and never seen any busted off chunks with pigmented resin to show fabric starvation. The black pigment in the resin mix was perfect to show areas of resin saturation/starvation.

Those test pieces of kev felt were not just on the resin starved missing-black bottoms. When I band saw cut the test pieces in half the un-peel-ply compressed felt was an Oreo cookie with a yellow center, even on the heavily saturated pieces

Peel ply compression with kevlar felt helps in several ways, and those skid plate material tests showed that any thick, resin-thirsty material may need to be vacuum bagged to force resin throughout the fabric or felt. Even the thick woven Kevlar tape showed some resin starvation on the bottom.

P3290029 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

That experiment was enough empirical evidence for me. 35 years of installing and repairing skid plates with different materials had already demonstrated much the same, but the ten material test pieces, including five kevlar felt pieces, at least eliminated my conformation bias.

Kevlar felt sucks.
 
Hey Mike McCrea !

Just for Kicks and Giggles ! Try saturating some Sweat Shirt fleece ( 100% Polyester), and put it through your test !

I've used it in place of Kevlar a couple of times, and seems to holds up !

The original owner of North West Canoe, put me on to the idea ! It is machineable, and adds enough thickness to work as a Skid Plate !

Thanks ! I know you don't have anything else to do ! :rolleyes:

Jim
 
Last edited:
Yep I fell in the if a little is good more is better back in '91! Had no clue about peel ply or even if it existed them. Used Saran wrap and the skid plate cured replete with wrinkles from the wrap.. an indication if I had paid attention to the mantra less or none is more.

YC, the absolute worst skid plate installation I have ever seen was put on by someone who did both, using every available drop of (OT urethane) resin from the cans, probably scraping it out like the last of the peanut butter, even after it had started to kick in the pot, and then Saran Wrapped the thickly resined felt.

Not using narrow strips of Saran Wrap, which might have conformed better to the complex curves of a canoe stem, but using a single sheet of Saran Wrap. A single sheet of Saran Wrap that wrinkled and crinkled, not just at the curves, but everydamnwhere.

His resulting skid plate had a quarter inch of urethane resin on top, with sharp edged wrinkles and crinkles and deep crevices. It was beyond fugly, it was dangerously sharp in a canoe-over recovery, and making it right, or at least undeadly, was a chore.

I do not know if release treated peel ply existed in ’91, I sure didn’t know about it. But it exists now, and I will never again do any fabric and epoxy work without it.

Someone, BWCA I believe, mentioned peel ply “tape”. I need to ask again, if that is actually release treated peel ply in narrow rolls I want me some of that stuff. I need me some of that stuff.
 
Mike, for non-whitewater applications, is that kind of impact realistic? After all, it's called a "skid" plate.

Back in the day skid plates were commonly known as “bang plates”.

Realistic? I don’t paddle any serious whitewater above class II, but I have binged some serious dents in my skid plate-less canoes; bow dents in oops, dang there’s a rock, stern dents when dropping over seemingly inconsequential rock ledges, when the back doesn’t quite clear the offending granite lip.

Even re-bar is a real thing. I used to run some small urban streams, just ‘cause they were minutes away from where I was living, and I could cross them off my list. I still paddle some rural rivers with old broken out dams and weirs and long crumbled bridge crossings, and there is rebar in them there hills.

I am installing skid plates mostly for added abrasion resistance, but if I am doing that work adding some bang impact resistance only takes a few extra minutes once the materials are cut.

For bang protection a layer of something impact resistant under the Dynel seems to work; carbon fiber or bias woven kevlar/Twaron tape did very well in impact testing, but even simple E-glass tape provided significant impact resistance. Compressed and hard rollered under peel ply those second layers essentially vanish.

http://www.canoetripping.net/forums...late-test-materials-impact-resistance-results

That experiment was enough to convince me to always add a second fabric layer under the Dynel. I got time, I might as well do it right.

If you are happy with kevlar felt, and can somehow sand it, well, it is an easy DIY, and the thickness does provide abrasion resistance. I regret every kevlar felt skid plate I ever installed, even the ones done with at the time best-practices, with tongue depressor beveled edges and strips of plastic wrap to smooth out the rough epoxied felt surface.

Never again.
 
I haven't had that kind of failure or the type of bang required to make it on lake boats or my oldest riverboat for that matter. Been running these butt dragger streams for 50 years. Maybe I'm just a superior paddler, but I doubt it.
 
if It is fuzzy.. squash it. It is blackfly season here.. Those not afflicted may not find this funny at all. those dang flies are killing our attempts at planting something we can eat later
But my fly friend we just gave you some info on your next skid plate adventure. File away somewhere. Hope you don't need it!
 
Back
Top