Old Town Appalachian - $550 (SOLD)

[Guest]

A rarely used 2007 Appalachian. Deep, dry, well but-not-crazy rockered Royalex river running tandem that also works suitably bow backwards.

16’ long
35” max width
23” deep stems, 15” deep center
OT “specs” a 1075lb burden

Outfitted with kneeling pads, and D-rings & webbing loops for floatation or gear tie downs

P5260004 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P5260008 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Improved seat drops; OT’s drilled dowel drops are suspect flimsy in a river running or WW canoe.

P5260005 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Flanged lower lining holes with interior tubing (we capped the old near-sheerline holes for aesthetics)

P5260015 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P5260016 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Deck bungees for painters, and thwart bungees for miscellanea keepage.

P5260019 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P5260020 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Skid plates with G/flex and graphite powder.

P5280034 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

The Appy bottom, in fact the entire hull, inside and out, is in little used excellent condition.

$550 for a pristine RX river runner is crazy cheep. Here’s the kicker, the Appy is a “Blem”. There is no visible blemish. Old Town speced the Appalachian at 67lbs. Although OT’s weights were often suspect this one weighs just under 80 lbs.

P5250002 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

We did not add 12 lbs in outfitting. Just drilling the new lining holes showed that OT used some seriously thick Royalex on this canoe. If you can shoulder 80lbs it should last a lifetime.

 

[Canotrouge]

Good price on a good boat!! That said, I'm not sure RX came in different ticknesses but I might be wrong. One thing for sure is no matter how heavy and thick it is if you are a river runner nothing last for ever lol! That boat up here would fetch 1200 to 1400 Cdn easy!!

 

[yellowcanoe]

Good price on a good boat!! That said, I'm not sure RX came in different ticknesses but I might be wrong. One thing for sure is no matter how heavy and thick it is if you are a river runner nothing last for ever lol! That boat up here would fetch 1200 to 1400 Cdn easy!!

When boats were made of RX Spartech at least made RX thickness to canoe manufacturers specs. Some wanted thick some less so. Old Town back then assumed their boats needed to be able to navigate shale ledges and dynamited rapids ( from the log driving days when channels were blown apart to prevent log jams but left sharp pointy remnants).

I have friends with perfectly serviceable Trippers and Kennebecs from 40-50 years ago.

 

[Guest]

Good price on a good boat!! That said, I'm not sure RX came in different ticknesses but I might be wrong. One thing for sure is no matter how heavy and thick it is if you are a river runner nothing last for ever lol! That boat up here would fetch 1200 to 1400 Cdn easy!!

That is (was) a stupid good price on a near new condition, well outfitted Appy. The Appalachian is my guide friend Joel’s canoe, and he is the antithesis of a greedy b*st*rd. I have seen un-outfitted Appalachians in used condition go for $700. But Joel is not that way.

The Appalachian is already spoken for, gone in a Maryland minute. I had multiple full price offers within an hour or less. Best of all, a friend was looking for one, so everyone is happy, and I have one more empty slot to fill on my rack.

Royalex did come in manufacturer-speced different thicknesses, in different areas of the hull.

The perhaps apocryphal story I heard, from a friend in the mass market RX canoe business, was that his company would reject some RX sheets as not meeting their specs, and another big manufacturer (OT?) would accept anything they could get, including other manufacturer’s rejected RX sheets.

One friend got a sweet deal on a boat, and another friend gets paid. Winner winner chicken dinner.

 

[yellowcanoe]

I missed seeing JB in the Glades. heck he will give you anything you need if he has it. After backing my Monarch into a palm tree in Collier Seminole State Park he was willing to lend us a pop rivet gun set so we could restore the rudder to usable condition.

 

[LanceR]

All right.....I confess....the Appy is coming to my slice of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where it will spend it's time in places like the Yadkin, Dan, and New Rivers in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. I've been looking for one since I returned to canoeing and I'm pretty exited to get it. My thanks to both Joel and Mike. Now I need to see about making some flotation bags or trying out some of my bigger old school heavyweight NRS dry bags as flotation bags.......

As far as Royalex, it not only came in different thicknesses but both the core and jacket thickness could be varied within a single sheet. My Dagger Reflection 15 is a tandem/solo three seat boat from the factory and was at times advertised by describing the varying thickness of the Royalex sheet at different parts of the hull. You can see and feel the changes in thickness on different parts of the hull with the heaviest wear and impact point getting the thickest layup.. As you might expect it is thickest at the stems and about a foot back you can see/feel a drop in thickness starting from the gunwale and running down towards the turn of the bilge. A few feet aft of that thickness change there is another one and several feet later going aft it progressively steps back up in thickness.


Towards the lower left of this picture you can see the start of the sweep of the first thickness change.



Down near the gunwale you can see the line where the thickness drops to its thinnest along the gunwale in the center 1/2 to 2/3 of the hull. That's yet another thickness change and not one of the general hull thickness changes. Add to that a section of the hull floor the seems to have a thicker core (to reduce oil canning?) and there are at least four and maybe five thicknesses in the single hull sheet.



For what it's worth what I've read is that the cost of making Royalex in so many different thickness, sheet sizes and style variations along with the associated high proportion of rejected sheets and what in industrial terms was low production quantities was cited as the cause for dropping its manufacture. And I've read that overweight layups were one of the more common Royalex defects which makes me wonder if the extra weight was the "blemish" in the this one? Thankfully it probably won't get toted on any death march length portages.


Best regards to all and thanks again to Joel and Mike.



Lance