Tune up work on the Penobscot

[Guest]

I gotta admit, I love the soloized Penobscot as a big boy, big load tripper. Everything except the Royalex weight, but I am done carrying canoes very far.

The outfitting on the Penobscot was a multi year work in progress, and I have everything dang near exactly how I want it for comfort, convenience and safety. The jet boat driver on the Green called it The Inspector Gadget canoe, which I took as high praise, and they never even saw it with spray covers on.

The Cooke Custom Sewing partial spray covers suit my needs superbly, and the paddle pockets and straps are beyond useful for holding paddles, sail and pole accessible

Single blade, double blade, and sail on bow cover.

P2160520 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

6 foot push pole, hiking staff, spare tarp pole on stern cover.

P2160519 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

With the spray covers attached there is no carry thwart available to grab at the stems, so grab handles on the painter loops are handy for when I really need to haul on something more hand kindly than rope.

P2160522 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

The painter lines do not usually go in that Velcro loop on the fabric. With the covers on there is not a lot of exposed gunwale to grab for control when exiting the canoe in wind or wave, and having the painters secured 8 feet away does not help.

Open cleat on the utility thwart for the bow line, along with the sail mount and compass. Dang, I really need to disassemble the utility thwart and drops and refinish them.

P2160525 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Open cleat on truss seat drop for stern painter, in case I need to grab the stern line as well.

P2160526 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Sail away.

P2160528 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Barcalounger comfortable with a slightly canted contour seat, inflation adjustable pad and back band. Another reason beefy truss drops are handy.

P2160535 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Foot brace and heel pads.

P2160530 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Four strategically placed D rings along the keel line. Webbing loop tie down points on the machine screw ends. Minicel wedge that holds the 30 or 60 liter barrel trapped between thwarts and away from the adjustable foot brace. That little minicel wedge is terrific to seat a barrel and hold it solidly from any movement.

P2170546 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Strap yoke with stainless double D rings

P2160534 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Massive knee bumpers. Those took multiple trips to get custom carved just right, but I can trim shift my bulk fore or aft a bit on the seat and still comfortably brace my knees, or thigh brace off the bottoms when I really want to lock in.

P2160532 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

And, finally, the in camp piece de resistance, a center storage cover, so I can leave all of the paddling gear inside the canoe safe and dry and ready to go the next morning.

P2160540 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

P2160542 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Time to make a work list.

All the brightwork needs to come out and be refinished. That will be revealing. There was some experimentation with sealing that wood using varnish vs spar urethane on the thwarts and drops, and some butt ends got urethane sealed, and some got epoxy coated.

Now that it is time to pull out and refinish the brightwork it would have been a grand experiment, except that the key to what I used where is in some long gone outfitting thread and I sure as hell do not remember.

The utility thwart needs some compass and bungee position rearrangement. Needs better map case attachment points. Foot brace bar needs split foam pipe insulation padding.

I made one big mistake in the original outfitting. The snap rivets for the spray covers need backing up inside the hull when originally installed. I could have used just a washer, but I wanted something there inside the hull for easy float bag lacing using those same though hull holes. Maybe something rectangular that would also accept a 1 inch strap.

The mistake was using something supposedly stainless steel. Stainless? That canoe has only seen saltwater a few times and always been rinsed. Stainless?

P2170545 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

26 freaking six of them spaced every 8 inches bow and stern. I am not drilling out and reinstalling 26 snap rivets in order to lose that rusty mess.

The nylon tabs are still in great shape, and they were well installed with a backing washer and epoxied on rubber caps for gear scrape protection, but the, harumpfff, stainless my arse, parts need to go. Those things shed rust at the slightest touch, which falls filthy into the bilge.

First order of reoutfitting business, take those rusty hunks of junk out and replace them with, um, I am thinking a run of 2.2mm Zing It line, threaded through the nylon tabs along each side, but I am open to better ideas or suggestions.

Second order of reoutfitting business, stay away from stainless steel of unknown quality.

 

[martin2007]

Mike, I'm going to respectfully request that you cease and desist from flaunting the obvious and unquestionable superiority of your Penobscots. I have an unaltered, boring, unglamorous, mediocre inglorious basterd of a Penobscot. Your engineering skills and sheer fricking (is that a word?) energy reinforce in a sad, sad, oh-so-sad way all my myriad complexes about being un-handy. I love what you've done with your P-boats, and wish I could be big enough and generous enough not to be envious. The pernickity-ness and perfection of it all quite simply blow me out of the water. I may never paddle my humble Penobscot again. Or I'll just re-name her Penob-irish. Who'd have ever thought I'd end my paddling days suffering the bitter taste of Penob-envy.

 

[Guest]

I have an unaltered, boring, unglamorous, mediocre inglorious basterd of a Penobscot.

Dontcha be dissing one of my favorite open canoe hull designs.

It was far from my favorite tandem, and suffered especially with a heavy bowman, but as a soloized tripper the Penobscot is everything I want in a rugged, big boy, big load hauler. I do dream of something with almost the exact same waterline dimensions, a little narrower at gunwales, and 20 lbs lighter. Without fugly kevlar skid plates please.

We have other canoes set up in similar fashion, but none fit me as well as the Penobscot.

The rusty crusty stainless is gone. The first couple SS rectangles were a PITA to remove before I got the hang of it. Bolt cutter snip at the center of the stainless. My shop bolt cutters were too big and I had to get the mini pair from the truck. Then reorient the snipped rectangle, pull and twist with opposing force pliers in each hand.

25 out of 26 came out clean that way, one took some special effort. Those nylon triangles are sturdy as hell.

The rusty barnacles were offensive to the eye, and had to go before they shed more rust dust. The Penobscot looks better already.

The 2.2mm Zingit cords barely fits through the nylon sleeves without using a wire guide, and 650 lb cord should be sufficient. I will wait until the brightwork has been refinished and reinstalled to run the Zingit. I may need that much time to think about what knot to use.

Joel is Mr. Zingit, that can wait til spring.

Time to plan some brightwork removal and refurbishment. The truss drops are seemingly in excellent condition, the drops for the utility thwart are delaminating badly. A couple of the thwarts are ugly but still sound, others look near pristine.


Fark I wish I remembered what varnish or urethane I put on which pieces experimentally. The butt end experiment was multiple coats of varnish or urethane, or epoxy.

There was a flaw in my experimental methodology. I have no clue what I used where.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Mike - quick tip on future stainless widgets.....see if they stick to a magnet. If yes - toss 'em and look elsewhere. I'm betting that those rusty rings can still be picked up by magnet...

Go, go Gadget canoe!

 

[Guest]

Mike - quick tip on future stainless widgets.....see if they stick to a magnet. If yes - toss 'em and look elsewhere. I'm betting that those rusty rings can still be picked up by magnet...

Good suggestion. I actually saved all of the cut apart and removed stainless steel bits from the webbing strap rings in a little box.

I just put a weak magnet in that box of rusty debris and picked up 8 or 10 pieces at once. I tried that with a powerful ceramic magnet and picked up the whole dang boxful.

Anything stainless steel has come to make me suspect.

Fortunately by local purveyor of stainless steel machine screws, washers, nuts and common hardware has proven over time to carry quality stuff. That is a farm country hardware store, in direct competition with a Home Depot and a Tractor Supply, both located within sight from their parking lot. They would lose their customer base if they sold crap stainless.

I do not like to diss canoe companies, especially ones I like and respect, but those stainless steel webbing strap attachments were from Wenonah.

I do not know if Wenonah still sells them, but the least I can do is let them know that they should not. I still have contacts at Wenonah, and may mail them the rustycrusty debris with a semi-humorous Do not try this at home note.

BTW, I bought some miniature stainless D rings from Cooke Custom Sewing. Teeny little quarter inch wide SS Drings, made to back up the spray cover snap rivets, not much bigger than a washer. There are four of those at the stems of the Penobscot, and those have rest resisted far better, as they have on other boats that see more saltwater action.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Well, Mike, it's not like I haven't been bit by the same animal. As I understand it, there are varying grades of stainless steel, so I suppose a manufacturer can supply what they list as "stainless" to a retailer, even if it isn't all that stainless. As has been explained to me, it never really means impervious to corrosion - just that it "stains less". Less than what? That is the question. I learned about the magnet test on a sailing forum. I guess those blue water sailors know a thing or two about corrosion and stainless steel. Sure enough, when I put the magnet to the shiny railing on my 40 year old sailboat, guess what? No sticky.

 

[Guest]

Well, Mike, it's not like I haven't been bit by the same animal. As I understand it, there are varying grades of stainless steel, so I suppose a manufacturer can supply what they list as "stainless" to a retailer, even if it isn't all that stainless.

It is hard to know the grade quality of stainless steel when buying something locally available like SS machine screws or washers. Even harder when ordering parts and pieces on line.

It is curious what stainless steel parts have been impervious to rust over the years. Almost every flange washer used in mounting seats or thwarts has remained clean, some for a decade or more on canoes stored outdoors. Those were bought from BMO. Hardware store SS cup washers, not so much.

The machine screws, washers and nuts from my local hardware have consistently been good quality. Some that I bought from a fastener supplier years ago, not so much.

SS D rings not so much, or at least not consistently. I had some beefy stainless D rings, the type with the hard plastic rectangle top plate, rust like hell in a few years time. Some of less expensive D rings on vinyl pads have rusted a bit. Those from Northwater never have.

Even so for most D ring applications I would rather have nylon D rings. Same for some other outfitting bits, the nylon triangles that held the rusty webbing strap D s on the Penobscot proved impressively sturdy when I was tearing out that corroded metal, and a run of ZingIt cord will look better and be more functional.

Steve, you have added a further task to the ongoing shop reorganization. I have three flat bins of size and type segregated stainless steel hardware. Someday soon I am going to stick a magnet in each binned box of SS and see what picks up easiest. I will try that with both the small weakish magnet and the pinch your fingers powerful ceramic one.

I will no doubt find a few things that I tossed in off the shop bench that are in fact not stainless at all.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

"There are five classes of stainless steel (ferritic, austenitic, martensitic, duplex, and precipitate-hardened) and only one is nonmagnetic (austenitic). However, the austenitic class just happens to include the most widely and universally used types of stainless steels in the market.

". . . . If the stainless steel chosen was austenitic, e.g. type 316, and a portion of the microstructure were changed to any one of the other four classes then the material would have some magnetic permeability, i.e. magnetism, built into the steel.

"The microstructure of austenitic stainless steel can be changed by a process called martensitic stress induced transformation (MSIT). This is a microstructural change from austenite to martensite and the transformation can occur due to cold working (the process by which many fasteners are made) as well as slow cooling from austenitizing temperatures. After cold working or slow cooling an austenitic stainless steel will have an appreciable level of martensitic microstructure. Due to martensite being magnetic, the once nonmagnetic austenitic stainless steel will now have a degree of magnetism."

https://www.fastenal.com/en/75/magnetism-in-stainless-steel-fasteners


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The above knowledge is crucial to tuning up a Penobscot or putting rails on an old sailboat. You must make sure your country hardware store clerk provides you with austenitic stainless steel that has not been subject to cold working or slow cooling.

Of course it's more complicated than that. The non-magneticism of "stainless" steels is not necessarily a positive or negative function of their stainlessness, which involves measuring the chromium, carbon and other elemental content of the steel. It's probably easiest to ask the country hardware store clerk to give you fasteners that are made out of the same stainless steel as Spyderco or Benchmade divers knives.

Personally, I prefer thermoplastic fasteners or even webbing loops to metal in a canoe.

 

[Guest]

You must make sure your country hardware store clerk provides you with austenitic stainless steel that has not been subject to cold working or slow cooling.

I will have to memorize some of that SS jibber jabber and lay it on them. They might understand what I am saying and actually know what they carry. The sales staff there is incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, and they know me from weekly visits, often looking for odd stuff for odder purposes.

I fear I may be losing that wonderful hardware. They recently closed off half the store and got rid of the house wears and yard crap, and a lot of the electrical and plumbing stuff. I asked what was up and their intention is to focus on what they do best, hardware and a massive four bay drive through lumberyard building. And, not said, customer service, which they do very well.

10 or so years ago a similar country hardware that had been in business for nearly 100 years slowly dwindled and closed after a Home Depot opened 20 minutes away. That place, Foster Brothers, was all of 9 miles away from my home, and I grieved like I had lost a dog.

Yeah, I am no saint, I shop at that Home Depot, and sometimes at the Tractor Supply along the same road, but my first stop with a parts list and questions is with the vastly more knowledgeable folks just down the street.

It does not hurt that they have the best selection of stainless steel I have ever seen in a hardware store, nor that I dang near have muscle memory for where to find what along that expansive aisle.

Another To Do List addition, buy enough SS machine screws, washers and nuts to outfit a couple of canoes, just in case I am seeing the end days of country hardware.