What are some models of canoes that do not oil can?
Oil canning and deformation
Deformation first. Poly canoes are the most prone of materials to deform on their own over time, and flat bottomed hulls are especially susceptible to deformation.
I don’t remember seeing an RX hull on which the bottom deformed simply from sitting on the racks in the sun. I do remember seeing stacks of some virgin (discontinued) poly Old Town design already wobbly bottomed still at the factory back in the 80’s.
Even poly canoes of the same make/model/year can differ hugely in how much they deform, from a minor hog in the bottom to something that is so sickeningly wavy bottomed as to be unpaddleable.
I guess some of that is due to storage and usage, but I suspect some may be from flawed manufacturing. I don’t know how exacting the process churning out poly canoes is, but I can see the potential for poorly distributed pellets in single layer poly rotomolding, or foam core/other issues in 3-layer.
Oil canning, which I think of as the bottom flexing up and down when paddled (especially in waves), happens with both poly and RX boats. Some lightweight composite hulls will oil can as well.
As with deformation flat bottomed hulls will oil can more than a canoe with a shallow arch or vee bottom. Having some shape on the bottom helps prevent oil canning. This U, or this V, has more structural integrity than this \___/.
Other reasons for oil canning – Manufacturers specify the thickness of the Royalex sheets they use. The same goes for the quantity of pellets/rotomolded thickness or 3-layer poly composition.
Some RX canoes, like old Blue Holes, were beefy throughout, and the beastly weight proved it. Good Lord, early Blue Holes were 3/8” thick RX even at the gunwale line.
Other manufacturers opted for weight saving in some of their RX designs, especially in Royalex’s later years, when the aching backs of boomer paddlers began to complain about 70LB boats.
I have a Wenonah Wilderness in RX that oil cans badly despite having some arch in the bottom. Perhaps that is to be expected in a 15’ 4” boat that weighs less than 50 lbs. Once I stuff it full of gear I can’t see most of the floor anyway, even if I can feel the “road” under my feet, like driving an old MG.
There are other, less common reasons that RX hulls may oil can - I’ve seen two Royalex Mad River canoes with major oil canning issues that were produced soon after the factory moved to South Carolina. I know that MRC was, at the time, having problems in the new facility.
Those canoes both had shallow vee bottoms and, even in the mildest of paddling conditions, the bottoms wobbled up and down like a rubber raft. Apparently the foam core had not expanded properly during the manufacturing process. Hence my suspicions that the poly manufacturing process may have similar process failures from hull to hull.
(Hence also my suspicion about why the same make/model/year RX hull would cold crack in Virginia but not in Maine….and why RX manufacturers preferred to leave the “cause” an unexplainable mystery)
Any mass produced RX or poly is only as good as the manufacturing equipment and operators at that particular time and place. I expect that there are Monday morning boats and Friday afternoon waiting-for-the-whistle-to-blow boats. I’ve paddled some.
In that regard builders who turn out a small number of canoes under a watchful and practiced eye have a distinct advantage.
Beyond the more simplistic bottom shape I think the overall design - how the chines, tumblehome, gunwales, thwarts and seat hangers all work together – has as much to do with oil canning and bottom performance as anything.
To that end I have greater confidence in a canoe from a known and proven designer, especially where the history of a canoe’s heritage, iterations, intentions and improvements are known. A willingness to put your name on a product design says something, and a design that appears to be an orphan says something else.
The worst the canoe world has to offer carries no one’s name and the “design” is often based on profit margin. See: stackable for shipment Coleman Ram-X canoes with internal keelsons. Or one-piece (hull, seats, thwarts, kiss-offs to the bottom and other structural stiffeners disguised as cup holders) poly boats.
Practiced designers do make mistakes (or suffer in manufacturing interpretation), but the best of them have long learned skills and years of tweaking and improving what they have conceived.
Apologies for a long-winded semi-rant. The number of open-boat designers was never large, the canoe enthusiast market is smaller every day and the guys with proven design chops all have AARP cards.
Given where the paddlesport market has long been headed, are there any young open-canoe designers coming of age? Or are they all playing with paddle boards and molded rec kayaks?