Kayaks are hard to come by down here. A GOOD kayak is damn near impossible to find. But I may have gotten lucky. I found an Ocean Kayak Scupper Pro for sale. But check out the crack in the hull. It looks like someone tried to 'fix' it with a blow torch.

Is it hopeless?




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get ahold of punisher in the fl forum. he knows a great deal about plastic welding.

When metals are welded they are heated until molten and the two sides flow together. When we do the same with poly the two sides do melt but they simply stick together. They don't flow which is what is needed for the cross linking of the molecular chains. The best systems apparently are a combination of epoxy applied on a prepared surface backed by stainless screening. The surface of poly has a ever present extremely light coating of an oil that comes out of the plastic. By playing a flame across the surface the oil is eliminated for a while. This allows the epoxy to adhere far better than without this.
I think if I were to try and fix this I would use the above technique with a high strength epoxy backed by fibreglass or SS. before anything else I would drill a hole at each end so the crack doesn't end in a point that concentrates the stress.

Ken, Good point about drilling the holes at the end of the crack. So the size of that crack and the past failed attempt to fix it wouldn't scare you?

Is the 'kayak welder' kit available from KFS like the one you speak of? It has something like a soldering iron with a flat, blunt tip, a bunch of strips of plastic "welding rod", and some wire mesh.

Cheers

http://www.kayakfishingstuff.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc...elder&Category_Code=

quote:

Originally posted by Living The Dream:
Ken, Good point about drilling the holes at the end of the crack. So the size of that crack and the past failed attempt to fix it wouldn't scare you?

Is the 'kayak welder' kit available from KFS like the one you speak of? It has something like a soldering iron with a flat, blunt tip, a bunch of strips of plastic "welding rod", and some wire mesh.

Cheers

http://www.kayakfishingstuff.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc...elder&Category_Code=

That is pretty much the kit you need.You can spend a lot more, but all the different kinds of welders all do about the same thing.
It's a good size crack, I wouldn't buy that one unless you get a REAL good deal.
Even doing the repair correctly, there is a chance it will crack in the same place again.

I was in the auto bumper cover recycling business for some time, and have worked with many types of plastics and urethane's.
The way I would do it is;
After beveling the crack, I always heated the plastic with a heat gun to get it soft and pliable, but not enough to make it too soft, keep the gun moving. Then do the welding.

Reach behind it with a blunt object to support the plastic while you are welding it. If needed, you can shape the plastic if while heating with a gun, and after achieving the right shape, you can freeze it in that position by applying a wet rag to the area or spraying it with a bottle of water.
Be sure to reinforce that crack with wire screen.

thanks pun.

Good tip on asking Punisher. And thanks if you're still out there Pun.

The guy is saying he has a buyer lined up for $450 I'll tell him that when he wants to sell it for $150 to come and find me. If it works we'll have a spare kayak in case any of you ever get down to Grenada.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Living The Dream:
Good tip on asking Punisher. QUOTE]

yeah ole pun is a pretty fart smeller,
i mean pretty smart feller.

Pun, I wouldn't like being called "pretty"

So did you get the yak??

quote:

Originally posted by Living The Dream:
Good tip on asking Punisher. And thanks if you're still out there Pun.

The guy is saying he has a buyer lined up for $450 I'll tell him that when he wants to sell it for $150 to come and find me. If it works we'll have a spare kayak in case any of you ever get down to Grenada.

Oh ya! I would love to come down and fish with you.

quote:

So did you get the yak??

Actually, I'm still up here in the Great White North. My wife put in a bid for me. It's a student selling it and once the end of the term comes he has to sell. My fear is that he'll end up tricking someone into buying it for expensive, who will ultimately track me down to help them fix the crack.

quote:

Oh ya! I would love to come down and fish with you. Big Grin

I can guarantee a nice guest room ~60 feet from water, excellent fishing and near calm water with a constant breeze. Catching may be so-so. But I met a local that kayak fishes (!) and he's going to show me the ropes over Christmas.

Livingthe Dream. For my money I would go with Gflex epoxy manufactured by West systems. This epoxy is specifically designed to adhere to plastics. You do have to pass a flame over the surface before applying the epoxy as mentioned in a previous post. The advantages are. You can use it with fiberglass cloth or steel mesh. You can apply it inside and outside the crack, you can apply multiple coats and you can sand it to a shiny finish. Unless you are a true artist with the welding gun I can say without a doubt the epoxy well look much better.

The plot thickens... So the guy tried to sell the boat to a dive shop, and they found a second crack, so the boat is pretty worthless except (perhaps) to me. The price is down to $100 (for a Scupper Pro!) and I think I might get him down to a case of beer. Am I the only one wondering if a third crack is far off?

quote:

Gflex epoxy manufactured by West systems

Thanks Quirkster. I'm going to Lowe's this afternoon, I'll see I can get that epoxy and some fiberglass cloth. It's way too late to get the plastic welding kit for this trip (I leave Tuesday).

Probably final update. With G-Flex & fiberglass in hand I went to look at the Scupper Pro. The crack I showed above would be NO PROBLEM to fix. However, I flipped the boat over. 3 of the 4 scuppers were broken away from the bottom of the boat. Some epoxy & a lot of fiberglass could get the scuppers to hold water (maybe), but the boat was very faded from sun exposure, and there was breakage of the plastic in 4 places. It's not hard to imagine that the plastic is just plain sun-damaged and brittle. Does sun-damaged plastic get brittle?

The price is "come and take it". Does ANYONE think it's worth a afternoon of my time to go nuts w/ epoxy & fiberglass?

Maybe you could use the hull as a mould for building a new kayak??

Lee

Interesting idea. Not sure I have THAT much spare energy/time though. I was thinking of a 'decoy' kayak for the thieves. But then it's just more junk laying around.

A local rental place has 2 more kayaks w/ cracks. the sun apparently is a real kayak killer.