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Poll: Drill wood inwales or drill kevlar hull for float bag cage?

Where to drill?

  • Drill hull

    Votes: 1 16.7%

  • Drill inwales

    Votes: 5 83.3%
  • Total voters
    6
Steve in Idaho

Steve in Idaho

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A decision has been made.
The Wildfire will get a saddle and bags. Saddle design is settled, but I'm indecisive about the bag cage. Two choices - drill holes in the gunwales for mini D-rings, or drill holes in the hull, such as I did in the Millbrook Coho. IMG_20240814_170933237.jpg

D-rings attached to the bottom of the inwales look cleaner. That's what I have on my Solo 14. But I suspect that holes in the hull will be lighter (and definitely cheaper). Also don't think I want to compromise the inwales - but it's always scary drilling holes in a hull. What to do? Just for fun, how about a poll?...
 
I didn't vote because I have zero experience with a Kevlar hull. Pretty much all my Royalex boats have a variety of holes used for gear cages mostly, flotation rarely.

A minor bonus with the holes in the hull, sometimes you just need to get to shore and roll the boat over to get rid of a boatload of water, those hull holes are a way for that last bit that would normally get caught on the inwales to drip out.
 
I would think that the holes in the inwales for tiny D rings would be much smaller in diameter than those in the hull shown in your post. In addition they would be filled with screws, rather than open. It seems to me that they wouldn't weaken the gunwales much. I screwed metal Mini D rings into the inwales of my Mad River ME 30+ years ago for flotation bags and have had no issues. I think though that They are beefier rails than those on a Wildfire. Drilling holes in the Innegra hull of my Phoenix for snaps for a CCS cover was stressful. I would vote for doing the gunwales.
 
My opinion is that a Kevlar Wildfire does not need a saddle or float bags because it is not a dedicated whitewater canoe. However, if the owner thinks otherwise, my preference would be to screw small attachments to or under the inwales. Drilling holes in a composite hull is ugly and will reduce resale value because the next owner will likely not want to bag the boat. Very little tension is required on float bag strings, and the tension is spread out over many attachment points, so there is little risk of tearing wood inwales.
 
I just voted in favor of drilling gunnels and attaching fasteners for this boat because Kevlar (or other composite) hulls are often fairly thin in section just under the gunnels. My reasoning is that the lacing could "saw" through the thin material there. If the hull were Royalex or T-formex or some other thicker material, I would go the drilling through the plastic under the gunnels route. In fact I did just that to two of my Royalex boats, a Perception HD-1 and a Mad River Outrage X. I used fasteners into the inwale on an old Kevlar Mad River ME I had between those two boats (late '80s and early '90s). I didn't worry about sawing through the thicker material on the Royalex hulls, never had a problem with it. I don't remember any problems with the drilled gunnels for lacing fasteners on the Kevlar ME, either, but that was 25 years ago and my rememberer is getting broker and broker as time passes. I'm pretty sure that parachute cord was the lacing in all cases.
 
I'd vote for neither. On a Bell with wood trim you can just back out the gunwale screw where you want a D-ring along with the adjacent screws, slide a D-ring between the gunwale and hull, and retighten the gunwale screws. You don't even have to drill a hole in the nylon D-ring tab, the gunwale screw will go right through the D-ring tab.

You can also add D-rings to the thwart fasteners if you like. In that case drilling a hole in the D-ring tab is helpful.PXL_20240820_212107776.MP.jpg
PXL_20240820_210910375.MP.jpg
 
Last edited:
gumpus said:
On a Bell with wood trim you can just back out the gunwale screw where you want a D-ring along with the adjacent screws, slide a D-ring between the gunwale and hull, and retighten the gunwale screws.
Click to expand...

Now if your particular gunwale has the flex space to do it this way, That would be an even better suggestion.
 
gumpus said:
I'd vote for neither. On a Bell with wood trim you can just back out the gunwale screw where you want a D-ring along with the adjacent screws, slide a D-ring between the gunwale and hull, and retighten the gunwale screws. You don't even have to drill a hole in the nylon D-ring tab, the gunwale screw will go right through the D-ring tab.

You can also add D-rings to the thwart fasteners if you like. In that case drilling a hole in the D-ring tab is helpful.View attachment 142971
View attachment 142970
Click to expand...

I will have to consider that!

But didn't I read somewhere that these gunwales were epoxied in place?

Good thing progress in my shop is slow. I don't even have the saddle done yet. I did find a nice piece of wood for the thwart going in the rear seat frame position. But now I should probably continue with this in the DIY forum...
 
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