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WTB: Hemlock Peregrine

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I've heard so much about the Hemlock Peregrine that I've decided to get one. If anyone here has one or knows of one for sale, please let me know.

I'm willing to throw into the mix a Mad River Independence and/or a Bell B/G Wildfire.
 
I'm sure you could trade those boats in towards a new one.

I didn't hear anything about him giving up building boats but Dave isn't getting any younger. I bought my Hemlocks because I'm unsure how much longer you will be able to get one.

Too bad you didn't decide sooner. Last I talked to him he's sold off most of his demo fleet from last year. The Dukes of Hazzard Peregrine he had was a nice boat in his best layup and sold for much less than retail. Even though I like mine, I kind of wish I would have held out for that one. I think it's off to Ohio or somewhere thereabouts. She looked good all oiled up and ready to go.

I assume Dave will be going to PA for the solo rendezvous. Best bet might be to try to set something up for that. I'm sure you could be driving home with a new Peregrine and unloading your other boats. No idea how he would work a trade. Best to call him. I know he deals with used boats.
 
I think you will like it. It is an easy boat to paddle. It is fast even though it doesn't feel it. Weight is acceptable and strength is great.

My recommendations are a Conk Contoured Seat at bare minimum and if you can afford it go for the scuppered gunwales. I tried the flat seat and it is OK for comfort but it puts you up too high IMO. I was struggling to keep my weight balanced between my knees and my butt.

I can sit or kneel and feel comfy in the CCS seat. It's a winner in my book.

I think either layup will be good. Depends on how much money you have to shell out. The difference in weight looks like more on paper than it feels on land. Both are adequately strong and stiff.

The one thing you may notice, and I did immediately is that the bottom of the boat will oil can, and even more so on the lighter premium when you don't have weight on it. The boat prefers you kneel or have a pack or something on the bottom. If you bounce, say when you are kneeling, you will feel it deflect.

Don't let this alarm you, it doesn't hurt anything that I know of, and I see it as a slight advantage. Keep pressure on the bottom when paddling and the boat stays true to its shape and glides like a penguin on ice, but when you go over something or crash into a rock, it will give and then pop right back out. It will be a different feel than your foam cored boats. I doubt you'd crack it in an impact though. A foam cored boat will, not always, but it has more potential to. I have my busted up Swift to prove that.

I'd also urge you to stay away from the clear gel coats and two tones. The pigmented gel is a little heavier but more flexible (most of the time) and the continuous color is easier for Dave to make look pretty. The two tone with the white bottom is cool, but it has an edge from masking that may aesthetically bother some.

I had a minor defect with mine, and it may happen to yours. If it does, don't be alarmed, it is easy to fix. Apparently there is a tendency for some styrene entrapment when setting the gel coat in the mold near the top of the shoulder. I had this issue on mine and it causes the gel coat to crack and flake away in spots. Dave admits this is an issue he has with the mold and being able to get the gel coating up in that area. It is such a tight radius, and upside down when he sprays it that there can be issues there.

If you do happen to have an issue it will show up after the boat has been exposed to some temperature changes and the styrene expands and cracks the gel coating.

I had Dave fix mine because he is close, but if it happens and you want to fix it yourself you can easily just pick away the blisters, add a dab of gel, let it dry and sand and polish it down. Problem solved. It will be harder to hide if you have a clear gel.

So anyway, be aware. It isn't anything that affects the performance or value of the boat, but it is something that can happen with that mold.

I don't know of any other issues with these boats and likely you'll chip or gouge the gel coat in the future and need to make that kind of repair anyway. So if it happens, consider it a learning experience.

Sorry for the wordy reply but I wanted to give you some of my experience and insight. None of it should deter you - hopefully just guide your purchase a little.

Enjoy!
Mike
 
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I find the above mostly untrue unless quality control has deteriorated. My Peregrine is some seven years old. Any boat that oil cans is deficient. The stiffest boats are the fastest boats. Oil canning saps the energy you have put into it. Where l'oiseau got the oil canning is good idea it wasn't from a designer.

Howver my Premium plus layup does not oil can. So far its been to the Everglades three times for thirty days total, another 14 in La Verendrye and some six weeks in Woodland Caribou, Wabakimi and Temagami and Algonquin

So the boat has experience. Its been twenty below in the unheated garage and also near eighty in there. I think that is extreme. Any skin defects have been put there by me. The gel coat is intact. (It has a white bottom that hides scratches).

I have the two tone. I found the edge outlined with thin duct tape. Tacky. I took the duct tape off. Now I wish that LDC had a better eye to drawing a bottom football with straight lines. He freehands it.. Not good. While I like the hiding of scratches the light bottom affords, the yahoo line can make you seasick. I have seen other makers do far better with applying bottom scuff patches.

Sorry L'Oiseau but your description really dissuades me from wanting another boat from Hemlock if they all oil can now. Some years ago they did not. And no, there is no foam in mine.

The Colden WildFire is looking ever so much more attractive. I have a Nomad which is a great boat, but the Colden Nomads are even stiffer and lighter!
 
There is no way you could put as much energy into the hull when you paddle as when I bounce on the floor.

Flip yours over and push in the center until it starts to deflect. Bet it will have an unstable point where the shape won't know whether to be concave or convex. It shouldn't take much force to do that.

All hulls deflect in the water or under load. It just happens that the bottom of these boats isn't flat and it isn't stiff (not nearly as stiff as a foam cored boat). It doesn't take much for a 200lb+ me to shift that around to that unstable spot where it may pop using my body weight. No way I could do that under paddling load. But it will conform to a log as I glide over it relatively easily.
 
Also lets not turn this into the catastrophe that happened when I was evaluating these boats...

I know you also say your boat doesn't' have rocker... but I can clearly set mine calm water with and see quite a bit of light under the bow and stern... it isn't a laser measurement but the high point is under water and the stems are out. I didn't measure it, but it is clearly there.

What I say is my own observation and experience only, you can call it un-true but in that case you'd be calling me a liar. I think that either you've misinterpreted what I said or perhaps I haven't used the correct solo canoeist jargon.
 
Oil canning occurs in the water when there is no obstacle under the canoe. The simple act of paddling will make the bottom move up and down. Running over an obstacle and watching the hull deform to the obstacle is not oil canning. I'm not sure, but L'oiseau, are you referring to the latter or the former or both?
 
I don't have a Peregrine, but I've paddled it and think it's a really nice canoe.

It seems YC and l'oiseau are actually agreeing on the lack of aesthetics of the two-tone line.

As to hull flexing, all my composite boats will do that under certain conditions, most certainly when I go over a submerged log. Flex is most likely to happen when paddling empty. Flex is least likely to happen when the boat is heavily laden with gear.

I certainly wouldn't want a hull that flexes constantly as I paddle in quiet water. What is "good" about some flex is that the bottom is less likely to crack when you do hit some submerged thing. Foam cores famously crack in such situations. That's why some paddlers think foam cores are "too stiff". Many other paddlers value the weight savings that foam cores can provide with thin laminates, and accept the cracking risk as the lesser of evils.

I do have a Hemlock hull, the SRT. It is a very early model that has a much heavier lamination schedule than Dave now uses. It rarely and barely flexes, even upon meeting a river rock with velocity. But it's too heavy and I would much prefer a lighter weight, and hence potentially more flexible, laminate.
 
I think this quote sums up what I was trying to explain:

Q. Since Souris River Canoes can flex; do they "oil-can"?
A. Oil-canning is a term used to describe the bottom of some canoes which flex up and down as a wave passes under the canoe much like the flexing one must do to the bottom of an oil-can to pump the oil out the nozzle. It is not uncommon to see linear (one sheet) polyethylene (plastic) canoes with bottoms that flop up and down in the water. This makes for very inefficient paddling and one usually sees this when paddling any of the cheaper plastic canoes plus a fair number of expensive plastic canoes. [/SIZE][/FONT]
By jumping on the seats of a Souris River Canoe, one can make the bottom shudder and flex. But why would one jump on the seats? In ordinary paddling use, there is no movement of the floor. Occasionally, some Souris Rivers have been run through the gauntlet at a high-volume rental programs of some Boundary Waters outfitters. Many of these canoes have 3 or more complete lifetimes of paddling and abuse including, but not limited to leveraging over beaver dams, dragging over portages, and walking in them repeatedly while the canoe is "bridged" on rocks over dry ground. Unfortunately, not every seller tells the buyer about the history of that "super deal", used canoe, and once in a while, there may be one that flexes more that desired. If anyone ever mentions that their Souris River canoe oil-cans, it is advisable to raise an eyebrow and find out more about their canoe's history before drawing any misleading conclusions.



I don't purposely bounce around in the canoe, but I do on occasion do this when I am struggling to get my feet where I want them and they've gone numb, a common occurrence with me and kneeling.

In this case, I've notice I can 'oil-can' a non-cored boat - I'm heavy and un-graceful enough to do this. I doubt I could get this to happen in a stiff foam cored boat.

So if you tussle around in the boat, it will probably flex. I've noticed that doing this that the Premium layups do it easier hence I deduced that they are slightly less stiff.

I consider this flexibility a good thing when encountering logs and rocks, not the actual act of the boat deforming under the paddlers thrashing. It is quirky mishap that this happens on a non-cored boat because it is very much less stiff that a cored boat, but it is a benefit in how the hull handles underwater obstructions. That is all I was attempting to state.

I don't notice it in waves or while paddling vigorously which would be detrimental to performance.
 
Sounds to me like you've got some flex, but not oil canning. My polyethylene boat oil cans as soon as it hits the water. The Nova Craft prospectors in royalite have a lot of hull flex - for instance, if you turn it upside down, you can fairly easily press the hull in with your hand - but they don't oil can. My experience with most hard composite boats is that they don't oilcan, and if they do, and you paid a lot of money, then something is amiss,
 
Contoured seats are painful when sitting on the corner where the curve meets the straight part of the rail. I have the seat that will go in it

If you already have a seat you like, that's great. Seats can be a pain.

I just want to join in strongly recommending the Conk Comfort Curve Contoured & Custom Crafted seat. I have two of them, one 10" deep and the other 8" deep. Both are much more comfortable than any flat cane seat I have ever used for kneeling, and they cause me no pain if I sit in the corner. Actually, in a boat as fine as the Peregrine, there isn't much room to move laterally unless one literally is a skinny arse.
 
This discussion has moved way past a WTB Peregrine into design, construction and lamination choices.

Design: The Peregrine was splashed off a Fiberglass Curtis Nomad, now offered by Colden, with some stem layout added. The resulting hull is flatter in the bottom than the original Yost design and has less rocker. Of some interest, Yost designed later versions of the same "Solo Tripper" concept for Bell as the Merlin II in the 96 and for Swift as the Keewaydin 15 in 2011. His son, Carl, just finished the slightly shorter, wider, 14.5 Phoenix and an un-named 15.5X 30, Merlin III?, for Bell Composites. Rocker has increased over time to improve speed and maneuverability, and the rocker is now differential to counter the sins common to most forward strokes. There are those who contend DY has learned nothing through his thirty five years of boat designing. They are mistaken.

Stiff hulls are faster than flexible ones. We have thousands of individual examples in ICF, and USCA race boats, not to mention rowing shells. There are a couple ways to eliminate flex: more fabric in the bottom or a cored bottom. The cored bottom is lighter but somewhat more fragile than thicker fabric. After selecting the best core material to minimize lamination, shear and buckling failure, the trick is increasing beam thickness. Doubling the hull's thickness yields a 3.5 X strength increase and a 7X increase in bending resistance. Quadrupling the bottom thickness yields 10X strength and 37X bending resistance increases. Those are facts, from Fundamentals of Composites Manufacturing, but the paddling community is a belief based society. Colden manages to eliminate bottom flex the old way, with fabric, and at acceptable weight due to infusion processing and integral rails.

Which fabrics and how they're laminated are additional factors. There are two concepts in armor lamination. One features high modulus, or compression strength, materials on the side presented to impact deflect and high tensile strength materials on the inside. This is the Bell canoeworks Black/Gold concept currently used in combat armor. The second is to encapsulate compression resistance material within high tensile strength layers to increase abrasion resistance at the cost of increased weight. F1 car chassis use this encapsulation mode. Bi weaves have no place in either scheme, they incorporate modulus and tensile strengths in the same layer, where half the material does not perform optimally. Note, the old and current Bell "tweeds" are all Kevlar, not bi-weaves at all. In a perfect world we want S glass or carbon in our outer layers and aramid Kevlar/Twaron, in our inner layers. Spread tow carbon will be replacing twist spun, woven carbon because it is stronger and stiffer. Higher tensile strength items like Spectra/Dyneema, Zylon and Vectran have characteristics that compromise their use. That will change, M 5 may replace carbon and aramid and Innegra may replace aramid, but not just yet.

Complicating fabric lamination schedule design is resin characteristics. A good resin for an all carbon boat should be fairly stiff while a rsin for an all Kevlar canoe might be pretty flexible, both matching the elongation to breakage characteristics of their fibers. When both fibers are used in a lamination some adjustments will need be made, usually a resin with stretch characteristics about half way in between is chosen by more sophisticated builders.

How the hull is assembled is another important consideration. Lots of good hulls were made by hand lamination. Sure, there are air inclusions, but a careful laminator generally produces good hulls. Wet bagging was first imported from the aero-space industry by Crozier, and then used by WeNoNah before spreading to Bell, Savage, Sawyer and others. The hull is hand laminated with slow catalyzation, a perforated ply lain in, then a bleeder blanket followed by the nylon bag. Vacuum pressure forces resin through the perforations into the blanket, which is discarded when the hull catalyzes. Voids and resin content were greatly improved compared to hand lamination but variation remains due to sketchy catalyzation control. Infusion is a simpler process developed by Lotus autosport and Seemans. The hull pieces/parts are placed in the hull dry, a release ply is applied and a measured amount of resin is pulled through the fabric and foam by vacuum. Voids are further eliminated and resin content further lowered with precise repeatability. The next step, using prepreg fabrics in a vacuum autoclave, is too pricey in fabric and equipment for recreational paddlesports. Hemlock and Sawyer hand laminate. Bell, Wenonah, GRB Newman and Souris wet bag. Colden, H2O, Placid, Savage and Swift infuse and Bell will soon. Several Canadian manufacturers use the word "fusion" with great imprecision; sometimes meaning infused hulls, sometimes oven cured, sometimes something unexplained.

Those wishing to make lighter hulls use modern, lighter weight materials, and wet or, better, dry bag them to reduce weight, and may even use a core to increase bottom stiffness to improve performance. Using cored, integral rails further reduces hull weight. But, unwilling to bag or use cores, the remaining course is to use less fabric. That often results in an overly flexible hull.

The great John Winters was once queried about his hull designs being built in the US by a manufacturer who used minimal fabric and flexible resin. It was over lunch, and John gouged a hole in the table with his fork emphasising that he wasn't going to allow his hulls to be compromised by the builder's "manufacturing deficiencies". I've seen the table; it sports a hole that could spill one's coffee cup.

So here is a little primer on solo tripper design, lamination design and process from a guy who's been a principal in two canoe companies, written dimensional specs for over a dozen canoes and designed lamination schedules for twenty years. Hopefully it provides some professional rationalization of confirmation-biased responses. Anecdotal experience is always questionable evidence. All that said, it doesn't make all that much difference which design or build-quality one selects, most everything on the market floats, will put the buyer on the water safely, and will paddle adequately to have fun. Alternatively, for those dedicated to lighter, stronger, faster, several of the choices are almost mandated.

Another issue, that should be addressed is fit. Height and weight are important, but the real deal is getting both knees comfortably into the chines with one's sitz bones on the seat, although that triangulation can be adjusted with seat drops and knee pad thickness. Peregrine and Nomad 28.5 inches wide, same width as FlashFire. DY's more recent solo trippers are wider, 29, now 30" wide, reflecting a super-sizing paddler pool. Wenonah's Wilderness is 30.5 wide, and Bell's lamented RockStar was a full 31, but the market seems slow to respond to taller paddlers with longer thighs and, maybe, wider knees. Who knows??

bon chance!
 
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I only used the term oil can because of the motion of the flex. I know that has a negative connotation but I didn't know how else to describe it.

And surely stiffer is better if the boat is never to touch an obstacle. But to move something stiffer the same deflection results in higher stress not mention spring energy is proportional to the displacement squared, so thus more energy can be absorbed through a flexible material.

As far as how the boat was designed I have all the respect in the world for DY, but I also know, as an engineer that it doesn't amount to a hill of beans how you design something on paper if it can't be implemented in the real world. I can spec and calculate until I'm blue in the face but it all comes down to how it gets translated from an idea to reality. Dave is the guy that does that and he has a way of doing. I trust he knows a little bit about it and I've only conveyed my experiences and what I've gathered from him in terms of my specific issues.

So we can sit here and argue about how DY designed the Nomad, and Harold and Dave changed it and how Dave builds it or you can go to Canadice every Thursday night during the summer and paddle the boats and talk to Dave and find out for yourself. Our friend doesn't have that option, so I'm trying to give him as much info up front as I can. I have nothing bad to say about Dave or his boats but I will also be as completely honest as I can with my experiences with them.

I've yet to see a perfect boat. If I do, I'll be sure to take it out and put a scratch on it. Enjoy!
 
Bi weaves have no place in either scheme, they incorporate modulus and tensile strengths in the same layer, where half the material does not perform optimally.

I don't have a canoe with a bi-weave of Kevlar and carbon, but I don't understand this comment. Perhaps you could elaborate.

If the builder of a flat water canoe has decided on relatively heavy S glass for the outer layer (instead of light weight carbon), my sense is that he is picking the inside layer not so much for tensile strength as he is for a lighter weight alternative to more layers of S glass. Kevlar is such a lighter weight material.

Given it's tensile strength virtues, Kevlar is also a common interior layer in rock bashing whitewater canoes. In a whitewater canoe, interior Kevlar serves a dual purpose: lightening weight while providing puncture resisting tensile strength.

But let's return to our flat water canoe builder, who simply wants a lighter weight material inside than more S glass. Kevlar has long been available for this purpose. My impression is that a bi-weave of Kevlar and carbon is even lighter weight than Kevlar alone. That would seem to be a good reason for using a bi-weave.

Even assuming there is empirical evidence that the bi-weave reduces the tensile strength of the Kevlar strands alone, so what? Again, we're talking about a lake canoe, and we've now got a lighter one than an S/Kevlar lamination.
 
Bi Weave

Bi Weave

The most common bi-weave used in Canoes and Kayaks is a 50/50 blend, with arimid running longitudinally and carbon fill inserted at 90 degrees. As per Sweet Composites, it is ~8 mills thick and weighs 5.6 oz per square yard and costs $29/yd in 50" fabric by the roll. Carbon is 58% of it's weight. By comparison, the standard arimid fabric used in paddlecraft is 5 oz sq yd and 10 mills thick, costing $16/yd in 50"goods by roll. The usual carbon is 5.7 oz sq yd and 9 mills thick, costing $28/yd in 50" goods by roll lots. Both are 0/90 degree taffeta weaves, but I've always preferred the four harness crowsfoot weave because it lays in better and has a slightly lower "kink", which improves strength a little. One can roughly double fabric weight to arrive at total laminate layer weight, with the understanding that wet bagging and infusion reduce the resin weight from 50% to ~46% and ~43% respectively. Hand laid carbon bi-weave will come in about 11 oz per sq yard, infused aramid about 9oz/sq yd, the total difference in a 15 ft canoe coming to about 8 oz; that's not going to make much difference on a carry.

Glass can be incorporated in bi-weave. I have samples of a glass/carbon and S glass/Vectran fabrics, but the extra expense occasioned by setting a loom up to run bi-weave isn't covered by the market price of glass, so it's rare. All the comments discussing C/A bi-weave apply to glass/A or heaven forbid G/Vectran bi-weave. Glass is simply a heavier compression material than carbon.

To increase strength by building beam thickness at minimal weight, aramid is thicker and lighter, hence the optimal choice. Further, carbon seems to take more resin to saturate, particularly in hand lamination, so the Bi-weave, which is 12% heavier to start with, requires more resin, thereby more laminate weight.

The issue with bi-weave is that it combines tensile and compression strength fibers in the same layer. Normally we want compression resistant outer and high tensile strength inner layers. The theory is that the outer layer resists deformation, but if the impact is great enough the inner tensile layers, forming an arc of greater distance due to beam thickness and differential radii will keep the outer from breaking. That armor theory works as born out by ceramic outers/UHMWPP, Ultra High Molecular Weight Polypropolene inners. In such a system carbon included in the bi-weave inner layer will fail before the aramid beside it because it has significantly lower elongation to breakage. Without accounting for weave performance, a bi-weave inner has close to half the tensile strength of an all aramid layer. We'd be better served by an all aramid inner.

Similarly, when used in an outer layer, the low compression resistant aramid will stretch, exposing the carbon to local buckling which may cause breakage. Bi weave outers have roughly half the compression strength of all carbon outer layers. I have personally repaired two ICF sprint boats where this occurred, the carbon fibers breaking or parting and "zippering" open while the aramid fibers were untouched and intact except for delamination.

There are other reasons for using bi-weave. It's attractive with has a high tech image. Secondly, that bi-weave hides a multiplicity of lamination sins beneath it's cross hatching. We loved our "tweed" at Bell. Bell used/uses 75% K49 and 25% K29, the latter colored but treated to take the dye in a manner that reduces lamination strength. Fabric folks tell us 25% K29 is a maximum content before laminate strength is compromised. Still, there are builders using 50% K29 and 50% Carbon, again, higher C content by weight. Probably contra indicated??

So, as I ended before, it may not make a whole lot of difference in a recreational boat used on quietwater, but every now and again that class one riffle gets pushy and the rocks a little bigger and more closely spaced, and....
 
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Charlies comments reinforce one reason why I was in favor of the Kevlar Hybrid that Dave builds. Although proprietary it is clearly a combination of E glass on the outside layer and Kevlar on the inside. The partials and inner weave I assume are also Kevlar.

The penalty is weight, but I don't feel that it is all that much of a penalty on such a narrow and low sheer boat.

I'm not entirely sure what the Premium is constructed from and how, but it is tweed on the inside (I believe 0 90 carbon Kevlar) and S glass on the outside. The lay of the partials and internals and the exact materials I don't think is public information.

I do feel there is a noticeable difference in stiffness between the two. I don't think it is anything that would contribute to performance for the average Joe paddler like myself that is mostly concerned about getting from point A to B safely and in reasonable time. And I suppose I am still young enough that two or three pounds doesn't feel all that horrible to me. Going from up in the 40's with the tandem to the 30's with a solo is a big difference that anyone will feel. I think our OP will appreciate that the most no matter what layup is selected.
 
Breathe. Seriously. Twitchiness ups with nervousness and when you hold your breath; it causes muscle tremor

You can always lower the seat if you fancy sitting only. Give yourself time.. And keep control of your head. Most upsets happen when at a standstill and getting in and out. Things get much more stable under motion.
 
Gavia, you da man! Full report when you get it, sounds like a canoe around the right size for me too. Now, with a shopping attitude like that, you should start looking into winter camping and buy a snow trekker tent!
 
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