Maintaining Wood Gunnels

[Guest]

If you are storing the boat out of the elements, and pay reasonable attention to the wood trim, there is no reason to believe that your gunwales won't last a very long time. Some of the nicest ash gunwales I have seen were on canoes 30 or more years old. You can't find long sections of straight-grain ash nowadays like you could then.

One canoe, two sets of gunwales.

I have a Vermont era MRC Independence, a freebie that the original owner stored outside (and too close to the ground). That storage rotted to gunwales to mulch in just a few years time.

I regunwaled it with ash 20+ years ago. That Indy is and was for years my only wood gunwaled canoe and has always been stored indoors. The gunwales are as sound as the day I put them on.

I probably oil the gunwales once at year on average. They are darker with repeated coats of oil, but still like new solid.

*OK, not “oil”; I use the DIY mix of boiled linseed oil, turpentine and spar varnish, mixed about 1/3 each. I am enduring fond of that mix and it is a good use for the dregs varnish left in a can.

 

[Alan Gage]

*OK, not “oil”; I use the DIY mix of boiled linseed oil, turpentine and spar varnish, mixed about 1/3 each. I am enduring fond of that mix and it is a good use for the dregs varnish left in a can.

How do you apply it?

Alan

 

[Guest]

How do you apply it?

I just rub it on with a small cloth held wrapped around the gunwales, wait a few minutes and rub off any excess with a clean cloth

The seat hangers and thwarts get in the way a bit on the inwale side, but it is a pretty quick treatment. I do end up with some oil mix swiped on the hull at the edge of the wales, but I don’t much care; beyond having rotted gunwales that canoe was cracked (and repaired) in a couple of places and the gel coat was shattered along the chines (also repaired; the original owner had thigh straps in it and used it as a day boat for whitewater before moving on to a more appropriate hull, leaving it to rot).

It helps to not have the rag/cloth over saturated, so I decant a little of the oil mix into a shallow container and dab the rag in that.

The initial oil mix coats, four or five IIRC, were done were as usual done before the gunwales were installed, including cotton swabbing the holes. On some recommendation I used a bit more turpentine in the first coat or two.

 

[Canotrouge]

Ah yes, thank you Mr. Gage. (And Mr. Dodd.) The fact that Watco can be applied like oil sounds like a boost. Mr. Canotrouge, I am .

But certainly not trying to be coy, rather trying to keep any of my beloved east coast American friends (at least one of whom makes his own PE boats) who happen to be lurking in the shadows of the world wide web from my recent and unpatriotic choice of high density PE boat. Social Media makes the real world a very strange place for me. (Not that anyone actually cares which boats I buy, but I'm sensitive in that way. What can I say: the ladies like it?)

Regardless, I went with the elusive 10.5 overt Covert from across the pond and she's oddly beautiful. The British made HDPE. Once again it's a boat designed as a tandem that I'm paddling solo (I have yet to own a designated "solo" canoe). In the end of course it came down to length and speed (those Brits seem to keep speed way up on their design criteria), but ultimately I'm excited about seeing how hard the boat can hit rocks. 10.5 seems big enough (much more room than 8'9", say, my other heavy consideration that just about went to purchase, though I've been hearing about an 11-footer for three years that keeps not happening within a reasonable range of weight), but 10.5 seems long enough to handle camping for days. If I can introduce the durability of PE into my long-distance/camping-from-boat style of boating.... well that would just be hashtag plain-ole-good-old-fashioned fun. In the end it will probably get me into trouble but along with being overly sensitive to other people's feeling, I also like seeing how far I can take something before some component of the system snaps. I can't explain it very well but there it is. Ash gunnels and all...

(Shhhh...)

Nice looking boat... Not a fan of plastic, but I have to say this look alright!!

 

[Uncle_Skwid]

Ya. It looks and feels at least a little like a canoe, not a bathtub. Quality PE canoes are still in their early stages of development. But I've only paddled it demo style, in a boat not set up for me. I am working on the captains deck as we speak! (Beer break at the pub which probably means Im done for the day.) The question is, Can you hit rocks with reckless abandon with this plastic? If so, it might prove very useful for Southeast Appalachian canoe camping. Very useful indeed...... Some say you can.

 

[Canotrouge]

endlessly... No that is for sure. Can you fix them? Yes, but they also have a life span, just like RX canoes...

 

[pblanc]

Ya. It looks and feels at least a little like a canoe, not a bathtub. Quality PE canoes are still in their early stages of development. But I've only paddled it demo style, in a boat not set up for me. I am working on the captains deck as we speak! (Beer break at the pub which probably means Im done for the day.) The question is, Can you hit rocks with reckless abandon with this plastic? If so, it might prove very useful for Southeast Appalachian canoe camping. Very useful indeed...... Some say you can.

Single-layer polyethylene canoes have become the choice of most whitewater boaters in the Eastern US. This is especially true since the death of Royalex, but the trend was definitely in that direction even before that. So lots of PE canoes have hit lots of rocks. Whitewater PE canoes and kayaks can and do crack. They can be repaired with thermal welding so long as the polyethylene is linear rather than cross-linked, as nearly all PE used for whitewater boats is these days.