Coating A Kayak With ArmorThane Polyurethane

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Welcome to this article on how to spray coat a kayak with a polyurethane system. I'm using here today is the two-part polyurethane sold by ArmorThane, calm and I've been using this stuff for about 15 years. Now I like it because it's extremely durable, it goes on quick and it lasts a really long time and that's important, because coating failures are the number one cause of premature skin boat death and I feel like it, doesn't make a lot of sense. To put this much effort into making something, this beautiful just to have the skin wear out after a couple years, which is why I use this stuff and not any of the other products that are out there now for all the advantages of this particular coating system. It does have some idiosyncrasies, the mixing ratios need to be extremely precise and it needs to be applied carefully. Otherwise, you risk having a negative outcome now. I know other people have had trouble using this system in the past. So what I'm going to do here today is I'm gon na walk. You through my entire system, start to finish so that when you get ready to coat your own boat, you're gon na have a good, solid foundation. That'S gon na give you a really high likelihood of having a really good result. So one of the most important parts of being successful with this system is to be really organized with your supplies before you begin. So what I've got here is enough supplies for four kayaks, because I'm coating four boats in the shop today, but when you're doing your coating you're only going to need 25 % as much of this stuff. Now first thing I need is the actual polyurethane itself. This is 32 ounces or the Part B, 16 ounces of the Part A and I like to buy this stuff as part of a kit that includes the skin now also included in that kit is a couple of these mixing containers here, and one of these paint Guides here - and this is just useful for cleaning up any drips, while you're working now you're also going to need some disposable gloves to keep your hands clean. A couple of these two-inch chip brushes here, a couple of four inch: foam rollers, a four inch foam roller frame and a 4 inch paint tray now for your kayak you're, already going to have mixing containers that came with the kit, but because I'm doing four boats At once, I had to buy larger, mixing containers for myself and a larger container to actually mix into. If you have a couple of these, all you need to do is buy one of these, and this is where you can actually mix your stuff up now. In addition to this stuff, you're also gon na need a roll of this inch and a half blue tape here and you can see over here. I have a drill with a paint paddle attached to it and I use that to mix up large batches of coating, but for small batches of coating. It'S actually better just to use a little stick and mix this stuff by hand. I'Ve got a couple rags back here and I use these to clean up as I go, and I have some sheetrock screws and an impact driver. Now, I'm not even going to try to explain what these are or how I use them. You'Ll see that halfway through the process, these are inch and a quarter sheetrock screws, and these are three inch long sheetrock screws. So the very first thing I'm going to do before I even get started with the coating is to check the symmetry of the kayak. Now, obviously, we already checked the symmetry. While we were lashing the chines and the keel on but oftentimes once you've skinned, your kayak and the skin starts to tighten up. It can torture the frame a little bit out of alignment, and this is just a really good time to check to make sure that there's not any issues now most commonly. What tends to happen here is either the bow stem or the stern stem can get forced to one side or the other and how you can remedy. That is, if you are sighting down the kayak and you notice that the keel is veering off to one side or the other. You can walk down to the end of the kayak and you can take your hands and you can give it a whack like that, and you can then sight it from the other end. Make sure that it's lined up again now, if you're, having an issue where the center of the keel is really badly deviated. If it's a little bit, don't worry about it, but if it's a really off line in kind of more of an extreme circumstance, what you could do is you can walk to the middle with a mallet and you can actually whack the keel in that area. And there's usually enough slip in the lashings that, even after the skin is on, you can straighten things out. So the next thing I'm going to do here is flip the kayak upright, and we're going to tape off the line where the deck meets the side of the kayak here, and we do this. So when we're coding, we start with the kayak upside down and we don't want those drip to run over onto the deck where they're going to end up being visible later. So I've got my blue tape here and I just want to tape right along this edge. Like this and you're gon na do this in one continuous line from one end of the kayak to the other, and what you want to see here is the blue tape being almost completely on this facet of the boat and just barely barely wrapping over this edge. Here, just a little bit so once you've gotten this all the way from one end of the kayak to the other. Before you go on to the other side, make sure you go around and really push it on there. So it's not going to come off while you're working, so I'm about ready to start putting the coding onto the kayaks here, but before we get started. I just want to mention a couple things now. The first thing I want to talk about is temperature, because this stuff is a very viscous product. It'S really thick, it's almost like honey, it doesn't have a lot of solvents in it. Like you see in a lot of the one part polyurethanes, and so, if you're mixing this into cool of a temperature, it can be a little bit too viscous and it doesn't penetrate the skin very well and if you're mixing even too hot of a temperature, it Can cure a little bit too fast and you can't keep up with the cure time on it, so I would recommend not using this stuff in any room, that's below 65 degrees or above 85 degrees. You can get away with 60 and 90, but it's better if you're more in the middle there. Now. Another thing I want to talk about is sawhorses. I know it seems kind of silly to specify anything about sawhorses, but I've found that if you work with sawhorses that are narrower than 32 inches, there's a high likelihood that, as you're coding, your boat, you might accidentally push it onto the floor and that's a disaster With a sticky boat, so I work with saw horses that are 32 inches wide and I also put spring clamps on either side of the boat on the sawhorses here and that keeps from pushing on the ground now. The last thing I want to mention is that, once you start this process, you are completely committed to going all the way through and that's going to take anywhere between two and two and a half hours. So make sure that if you have to use the bathroom you do that beforehand, you don't have any distractions around and you're ready to do the whole process. So we're ready to mix up the goop here and you can see I've got my two measuring cups. If you were just doing a single kayak, you would be using the smaller, clear measuring cups that come with the kit and the mix that I'm gon na be using. Here is 6 ounces of Part B to 3 ounces of Part A and that's going to coat. One side of the bottom of the hull, and so I'm going to be mixing four times as much here because I'm doing four different kayaks today. But if you're doing this, you want to be doing 25 % of what I'm doing here now. The important thing about this - and I cannot stress this enough - is that these ratios need to be nearly exact, because if you go a little too much on the Part B, your boat will be sticky forever and there will be no way to fix it. So what I do when I'm pouring these is, I go to the bottom of the line on the Part B and the top of the line on the part a so I'm just barely barely barely biasing it towards being a little bit hot. On the Part. A now, when I say a little bit, I do mean a little bit because if you go too far towards the Part, A this stuff is gon na kick way too fast and you're gon na have problems with the coating in that direction. So this is the most critical thing about this process is getting these mixing ratios right, so I'm gon na start with my Part B here and pour it in and I'm looking to get up to 24 ounces. In your case, if you're just doing one boat you'd be looking to get up to 6 ounces and as I approach my line, I'm slowing down slowing down slowing down and stopping a little bit before. So when it settles it just touches the bottom of the line. Now we're going over to the Part A it is imperative that you never confuse, which container is Part A and Part B. Can you see how serious I am about that with all those part A's, I hope so. Okay, so once again, I'm going up to 12. Here because I'm doing four boats, but you would be going up to three - I just went to the bottom of the line on the Part B at 24 ounces. Now I'm gon na go to the top of the line, the part a at 12 ounces. So, just ever so slightly hot on the part, a okay cool, alright! So now I'm gon na go ahead and mix these up. I'M gon na pour these into my mixing container and it's gon na take a sec just let it drip for about 30 seconds, or so it's important when you're doing processes like this. That have to be right. The first time that you don't get stressed out - and I know that's kind - of a contradiction because there's a natural stress and having to do this exactly right, but the more that you freak yourself out about it, the more likely you are to make mistakes. Okay. So these are mostly drained out here. What I usually do is I stop draining the Part B and I let the Part A drain for just a little bit longer and that just ensures that the access that's stuck to the ball inside of the cup gets into there, where it's supposed to, and it Just biases it towards being a little bit hot on the partay okay. So now that I've got these in there, what I'm gon na do is I'm going to use a power drill with a mixing attachment and I'm gon na mix up this whole goop, because that allows me to get it done really quickly. And I have a lot of different boats to coat here today, and so I need to move as fast as I can. If you're doing this at home and you're using a smaller amount, you're gon na want to take a stick or some type of mixing. Paddle and you're gon na want to mix this by hand for a full five minutes, mixing vigorously and then you're gon na start. The next step - okay, I've got my tray, follow the goop here and my four inch roller and kind of the overarching idea here. Is you want to get this stuff on the boat as fast as you can, because the quicker you work, the more fluid this is and the better it will penetrate the skin. But you don't want to work frantically, so you can end up getting this stuff all over the floor. There'S not a lot of extra material here. You do need to make sure that this stuff gets on the boat also, while you're working try not to drip this. It'S easy to kind of tip it side to side, alright, so working as quickly as I can, I just want to coat the entire bottom of the boat good thick coat you're putting this stuff on fairly thick. You want to move quickly while you do this, but not frantically, so I usually roll it on the roller and if I don't get the entire bottom facet covered here, I'm not as concerned about that. I'M more concerned about making quick progress down the boat. So I have good solid saturation if this is six ounces of the Part B and three ounces of the Part, A it will be just about perfect if you're, making a really big kayak like say a double or a really large f1. You might consider ordering a little bit more and I think quarry sells a half kit for that. But generally, this is good for everything, but the very largest size of kayaks, and I'm just going to keep working my way towards the back here and the goal is to get this stuff on the kayak and out of your mixing container as quickly as you can You want to try to get the entire bottom of the kayak coated with one good thin coat and if you have extra, when you're done go over and try to distribute it evenly along, the entire coating don't go to the other side. So I've just finished coating. This entire side, with my first six and three ounce batch and before I move on to mixing up my next batch, I want to roll the entire thing with a lot of really long rolls like this. Just so I can get the whole coating nice, and even so, I just mixed up a second batch with six ounces of the Part B and three ounces of the Part A and I'm going to use this to coat the entire other side of the kayak. The first batch of six ounces and three ounces coats, one side of the bottom of the kayak and the second batch coats, the entire other side of the bottom of the kayak. Once again, you want to work quickly, but not frantically and try to get this stuff on the boat as quickly as possible. You want to really saturate all the cloth, it's more important to have it well saturated and to have the occasional dry spot than to have large areas that are only lightly coated. I'M a big fan of using very long swipes, because that seems to make it a lot more, even and when you're done with this entire side. Now is a good time to take anything. That'S left inside of your cup here and make sure that you've got the keel, nice and saturated, and also make sure that you roll down the ends of the kayak to make sure the stitching at the ends is saturated as well. Now, when you're finishing up with this step here and you've got both sides really well saturated oftentimes I'll have a little more stuff in here than I needed, because the first batch was kind of partially consumed just by the material sticking to the inside of the mixing Cups and also the container so there's usually a little bit extra in here and anytime. I have extra goop unless the whole thing is just way too goopy. I try to put it on the keel and on the bottom of the boat, because that's the highest wear point on your kayak. Now the penalty for having a coating that's a little bit too thick is that it can get kind of hazy and it can look kind of sloppy, but I'm willing to trade a little bit of sloppiness for extra durability on the bottom of the kayak. So I'm gon na take the extra material I have in here run it down the keel and just you know, really paint the bottom of the kayak. So I just mixed up a final six and three batch, and this is going to be split between one half of the kayak and the other half of the kayak. So the first half of the hull of the kayak got a single six and three and the second half got a single six and three, and now we're going to use a six and three to coat the entire bottom. The reason that I poured it into all these separate cups here this is for four different kayaks. Is I like to make sure that I'm splitting the batch evenly between one side of the kayak and the other side of the kayak? So this is one six and three. This is another six and three. This is another six and three, and what I'll do is I'll. Just pour this into my paint tray and I'm gon na use that to coat the entire bottom of the kayak on one side and then I'll pour the other one in and use that to coat the entire bottom of the kayak on the other side. So the entire bottom of this is completely coated and saturated from our first two sets of six and three and everything looks kind of matte and a little bit glossy. The point of this last coating here is to really gloss out the rest of the bottom of the hull to make sure that you've got really good coating thickness. So I'm going to go ahead and put this stuff on before we're just looking to roll it on, and what you want to do is just get a nice even coat over the entire bottom and when you're done, the whole thing should be nice and glossy. But not runny and drippy. If, when you get towards the end of this, it seems like you still have a little too much. You can slow down make sure that you got enough goop on the keel, make sure that you got enough goop on the ends of the kayak, where the stitching is, and then you can kind of make a judgement calling whether you're gon na apply the entire amount Or not, I think, if you're doing a low-volume, greenland boat, you're, probably still gon na - have a little bit left in here, but if you're doing a higher volume boat. This should be just about perfect, so I just finished putting the third coat on the boat. So first half was a six and three second half was a six and three, and then I split a six and three in half to do the entire bottom of the coat and the goal on this coat. Like I just said, I'm repeating myself on purpose here is to make the entire bottom of the boat, mostly glossy. Now, once you've got all the goop on it's worth going around and doing a roll over the entire kayak. You don't want to roll too much because at some point the stuff is going to get too tacky and it's gon na start to look worse and worse and also, if you look really carefully at this skin. What you'll see is tiny, tiny little bits that look like dust. Those are not dust, don't try to roll those out. What those are is just little frayed bits of fabric and the more aggressive you are on those the worse they're gon na get. So you do want to make sure you work this enough to get the whole boat glossy, but don't just keep working it over and over and contribute to that fuzzing up a little more now, once I've rolled the whole thing out and I've gotten it nice and Glossy from bow to stern - I might have a little bit more left in here, although usually most of this stuff is gone just depending on the overall volume of this kayak, and what I'll do with this stuff, especially if it's partially cured, is I'll use this to Go over the keel and do one final coat on the keel and on the chines, and the reason that I do this is because the keel is your single highest wear point on the kayak, and so that means, when your skin's going to wear out. It'S gon na wear through on the keel first, so putting a little bit of extra goop on the bottom. Here, it's just going to make your kayak last little bit longer now. Finally, you're gon na want to make sure that you really get this stitching at the end of the stem here. Make sure this stuff is nice and saturated. Now another technique you can use if you're finding that this is really uneven, is you're gon na do what I call transverse and then longitudinal pulls, which means that you can walk down the entire kayak and you can do this all the way down and then you Can follow that with a longitudinal pull like that, and that's going to give you a really nice even coating, so I've just finished coating the boat here. The whole bottom is nice and glossy. What I try to aim for, at least on the bottom of the boat, is a kayak, that's totally glossy and maybe has the occasional sag to it, but not a whole bunch of dripping or sagging. If you end up with way too much material on your boat, you can get that scraping card that I showed you earlier and you can actually scrape some material off into your cut cup and then you can roll it out and get it nice and glossy the Keel here, I've gone over a few times that way. I'Ve got good build-up on the keel and on the chines as well, and I made sure that I double-check the stitching on either ends to make sure it's nice and coated. So now we're gon na go ahead and turn the kayak over. This is something that I do. I don't think anybody else does it and what I do is I actually suspend the kayak on a couple of different sheetrock screws and then I turn it over and believe it or not. That will stick exactly in that location. Well enough to get the coating on the deck and the advantage to doing it. This way is that you can coat both the bottom and the top on the same day, and that gives you better adhesion between the two different parts of the coating. Where there's a little bit of overlap - and I just think the whole thing looks a little bit nicer as well when you're finished. So if you don't want to do this as long as you didn't drip too much over the edges of the kayak, you can actually wait for this to dry for a couple days and then flip it over and do the deck I'm just a fan of doing It this way because it gets the whole thing done at once, so this is gon na seem a little bit nerve-wracking, but I promise you that it's okay, so I'm going to take my sheetrock screw a little inch-and-a-quarter guy right here and that's in the front of The kayak and then I'm going to come back here towards where it's still fairly flat at the back of the kayak, so about a third of the two-thirds of the way back, and it's very important to do this accurately. If you're going to use this technique, you absolutely must get this to where it's in the middle of the chime, because if you pierce through the skin, where there isn't any chime behind it, you can end up having some leek issues in those areas, and I go In about a half inch three quarters of an inch, it's very important that you're using sheetrock screws here brass screws are gon na tend to bend really badly while you're working and if you use deck screws, they have too aggressive of a tip, and it really tears Up the skin, so three inch long sheetrock screw right there and that's coming about two-thirds of the way up the chine and then right down into it going straight up and down I'm going to do this on the other side as well. Okay - and these are the three points - that's going to suspend the kayak, so I can turn it upright without it gluing itself to the sawhorses. So you can do this by yourself. If you only have yourself to work with just go ahead and flip it over really quick and then get under the kayak and reset your sawhorses and get everything on top of the screws, the area is where the sawhorse is briefly contact. You can just go ahead and use a little bit of goop and a brush to make to kind of smoosh that out, but if you have helpers it's much easier and so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to suspend this, and I had my Helpers put the sawhorses directly under the screws now believe it or not. This will actually balance really well and isn't going to move around very much just on these three little screw heads because there's so much weight concentrated on such a small area. But another thing I do just to make sure that things don't move around on me is I'll, take a clamp and stick it like that, and that just helps to hold this in place. So you can see how the advantage to taping off the deck is that any goop that comes over the edge is less likely to get on to the fabric right here, and so now that I've got it upright. I'M just going to go ahead and peel off this blue tape. Now something I want to show you - and this is very important if you have an area where the goop made it past the tape like this, don't touch it make sure you just leave it like it is, and then, when we get to the actual coding process, We'Re just going to roll right over it and the reason I tell you that is because, if there's a big bead of goop here and you take your card or your roller right now and you scrape that sideways, what you're going to be doing is you're gon Na be taking mostly cured material and scraping it over dry cloth and that's going to create a really terrible, visible discoloration. So if you have any drips that made it past, the tape make sure you leave them where they are so. The last thing before we mix up the goop and start coating the deck here is I'm gon na put a little bit of fabric or newspaper down into the cockpit and that's just going to protect that from grit drips while we're painting the coaming. So I've just got a little scrap of fabric from the skinning process and I'm just gon na stick this down in here and you can do that with newspaper or whatever, and that's just going to protect the inside of the cockpit. So now I'm getting ready to mix up a batch to do the deck and what we're gon na do here. Just kind of in general is we're. Gon na use one six and three batch to coat the entire top of the deck and then we'll use another six and three batch to coat the coaming and to recoat the entire top of the deck, and that's usually more than enough material. Now I just changed my gloves: it's got a fresh roller on and you can consider using a fresh paint tray or you can reuse your paint tray. If you wiped all the goop out of it, you don't want to mix a bunch of the previously partially cured goop with a bunch of new goop. So up to you how you want to do that now, just like before I've got the part a and I've got the Part B and I'm being meticulously careful to never mix those up. And in this case, because I'm doing four boats, I'm gon na go to 24 ounces and I'm gon na go just to the bottom of the line on the 24. I stopped a little bit before I get there, so it stabilizes right at the bottom of the line and then on the Part, A I'm gon na go half that which is 12. Once again, you would be using a 6 and a 3, and this one I'm going to stop it right when it gets to the line, so it stabilizes at the top of the line, and that's so we end up just a little bit hot on the part. A but not too much all right combine these together. I use a drill to mix these together. You'Re gon na want to use just a stick if you're doing a single kayak and you're gon na want to mix for a full 5 minutes. I let these drain for about thirty seconds, and then I pull the Part B away and I let the Part A drain for about thirty more seconds and that just makes sure that the ratios are correct. So now I'm getting ready to put this code of six and three on to the deck here, and this is going to cover the entire deck, so both sides of the bow and the entire stern as well. Now I've got a couple things with me that I didn't have before, and one of them is this card here and another one is just a little chip brush and we're gon na use both these for cleaning up any oopss, where the goo drips over the side Of the china, so, for instance, if I'm rolling and I've put a little too much on and I can't catch it - you can grab this guy and you can just grab any stalagtites of goop that are heading over the edge and put it back up top. That way, you don't have any ugly drippy spots now. This is going to go exactly the same way as it did on the bottom here. You'Re just going to take your roller and the overarching idea here is you want to work quickly enough that this stuff isn't curing in the cup, because the faster you work, the more fluid it is, and the better it saturates, the actual fabric you want to do It just a nice coat over the entire deck. This doesn't have to be super glossy, but it does have to be thick enough that it's penetrating well, so you have to kind of be careful when you get towards the ends here, so you don't put too much on and doesn't drip over the side and then Once I've gotten both sides and the entire back done I'll, usually go down and I'll take any extra. That'S in there and I'll try to really get this Center seam coated in the front and the back. It'S okay! If you don't get quite all of the stuff on either side of the coaming coated and right now, we are just doing the deck we're not looking to deal with the combing we're going to do that on our next step. So I just finished covering the entire deck, with that first coat of six and three, and if you don't have quite enough material - and I know I just said this - but I feel like it's important to repeat it: it's better to get good coverage on less area Than to get light coverage over the entire thing, having said that, you should be able to get the entire deck now, if it's a little patchy, and not quite as glossy as when you did this on the bottom of the kayak. It'S because we didn't use quite as much material, so you can even it out with a step that we did at the end of the bottom of the kayak in the beginning of this top part of the process, and that's just doing transverse pushes like this and Then, following them with longitudinal pulls and that's going to give you a nice really even matte finish. So the next thing we're gon na do is we're gon na coat the combing and then we're going to go over this entire deck one more time to make it nice and glossy. So I'm about ready to do my final pour here and this is calibrated to be a six and three as well. But it's often the case when people are using this material that they consume the part a a little bit faster than they should and a really common situation that people end up with with this stuff is that they go to mix up this last batch and they Don'T have quite enough of the part a now, so the way that I like to do this is for my very last pour here. I want to pour either three ounces of the Part A in this case. It'S going to be twelve ounces because it's for boats or I want to pour as much of the Part A as I can, and then I want to do slightly less than double that over here and if you use this kind of measuring cup there's a lot Of ratios, you can play with to get that half-and-half type of thing. So by pouring your Part, A here first, you don't risk starving this last coating of Part A and then having problems with your boat. So I'm going to go ahead and pour the a in here we'll see how far we get and okay it looks like we are getting to eight ounces, and that is not quite as much as I want, but it's going to be more than enough, and so, If you end up in this situation, like I just did where you're a little bit shy on your part a well, you can go ahead and just double that on your part, be here, and that way at least you've got appropriately mixed ratios. Something I want to mention is that, if you don't want to find yourself in this situation - and you don't feel safe, getting this close to the margins of having just enough to finish, your kayak Cory actually sells just a nice little to ounce part a specifically for People who end up in this situation - and so I'd say when you order your kit, maybe it's worth spending a few extra dollars just to buy that little baby part a you're, probably not going to need it, but it does give you extra insurance. So I've got my last six and three here or what should have been a six and three in this case. It'S a little bit light and it's they've got it mixed up and before I put this stuff for the second coat onto the deck, I'm gon na go ahead and coat the fabric on the inside of the coaming and the combing itself. Now you don't have a whole lot of extra material here, so you don't want to spend a bunch of time just letting this drool down and get inside the cockpit. We use that extra piece of fabric to protect the cockpit, but it's better if it doesn't have to do more work than it has to, because you need this material to finish your kayak. So that said, you do need to make sure that this stitching is very well saturated and what I like to do is really heavily load up my brush here and work quickly, so I'm putting on a really thick coat. But it's not dripping down the inside and you're going to use this batch to coat the entire inside of your cockpit combing, making sure that there's no dry spots on the wood or the fabric, just like before it's imperative that you work quickly here, because this stuff And you're in your pot here is curing and the faster you get it on the boat, the better it'll penetrate and the better it'll stick. So you want to get this nice and goopy all the way around get a good seal between the skin and the combing. Now the next thing you're going to do is you're going to paint the top of the coaming lip all the way around like this and then you're gon na make sure that you paint the underside of the coaming lip and when you're doing this, you really need To load up your brush and force this brush up underneath the combing to make sure that you've got all the real estate and they're well coated, and also the seam on the outside, between the coating, the coaming and the deck where you couldn't get with your roller. Now, once you're done with all this and you've got some material left, you're gon na take the rest of this material and you're gon na go ahead and roll the entire kayak. So it's nice and glossy just like it was on the bottom of the kayak and another thing. I want to call to your attention, because this is important. Very commonly people have dry spots at the very tip of their kayak, and so, while you still have the brush in your hand, make sure that you take some goop and you paint the end of the kayak. So you don't end up with a dry spot there. So now that I've gone ahead and coated the entire deck here, it's been coated once originally, and then we coated the coaming and use the residual from the coating. Six and three pour to do the entire deck. The whole thing should be mostly glossy with maybe just a little bit of fabric showing - and this is pretty much finished, but there's a couple finishing touches. We can use here to really make things really nice. So the first thing I want to check for is to make sure that there's no stalagtites of goop underneath the lip of the combing. So I take my finger and I run it all the way around the combing lip just detect check for combing stalagtites and then the next thing. I want to think about focuses on these deck line. Holes right here. You can see where this lacing has pulled tiny little holes in the deck in the deck. That is mostly going to fill itself in just from the goop itself, but the place that I'm concerned about it is on the back of the kayak, and you can see back here that when you're looking at the lacing oftentimes the lacing and the stitching is pulled A lot of little holes in there from the tension of your stitch - and this is when we can use this partially cured material. That'S in the bottom of your paint tray here to actually take advantage of the fact that this is goopy and viscous now and really fill in any of those holes. I don't tend to care too much about the lacing at this point, because I don't want to make the whole deck goopy, but what I will do is I'll load up some of this thick stuff onto my roller here and I'll roll it right down the middle Of the seam - and if you do this really surgically, you can get this whole thing fairly. Well, gooped now, of course, there's still going to be a little few holes in here, but you can seal those with aqua seal later up underneath the bow here. This is the highest ware point in the entire kayak and it doesn't have a rub strip on it. If you're making a Greenland kayak there's a rub strip. That goes all the way around this and really protects this. But in the f1, the balance of how this works with waves and wind means that I can't put much in the way of protection here without having it compromised the performance of the boat on a wave, and so what I like to do is I take a Little bit of this goopy stuff right before I'm done and before I walk away from the boat and I roll it on the bottom of the keel right up here at the bow, and I let it just be nice and goopy. It'S okay! If it's even dripping off of there, because what you're gon na do is you'll, come back about a half hour later, with your finger and just gently straighten that and shape it and then come back a half hour later, and do it again - and this will give You a really nice thick coating right where a really high wear spot on the kayak is and it'll make it last a lot longer now. Finally, just like you saw before I'm gon na finish off this coating here by making it nice and even by doing a series of transverse rolling and also longitudinal rolling. So after I'm done doing everything else, I've gone ahead and checked. First, the lag tights around the coaming I've filled in any of the lacing holes in the back, or at least most of lacing holes, of some of the more viscous goop and I've added a little bit of goop here to the bottom of the keel. At the bow, I'm gon na finish off the kayak, with a series of these type of rolls here, where I go side to side and then finally, I'm gon na do some long rolls like this and that's just gon na really even this out and when you're Done the whole kayak should look mostly glassy if there's a few little fabric looking spots, that's totally okay, but you're. Looking for a mostly glossy finish, that's not goopy! Now, if you're, making a very low volume kayak - or you just happen to make these batches a little bit bigger if this starts to get so goopy that it's dripping and sagging, what you can do is you can take that scraper card and you can actually scrape Material off and then you can roll it out, so you have a glossy coat that isn't having big, sags and drips and then, finally, before you walk away from this thing, make sure you grab your scraping card and you look around the edges to make sure that You don't have any nasty, goop stalagtites heading under the boat, give everything a good once-over make sure you like it. Then you can take off your gloves and you're done, at least for a little while, but don't forget to come back and use your finger to shape that goop. That'S hanging off the top bottom of the keel at the bow. Otherwise, it'll turn into little drippy things which isn't a big deal. You can just cut that off with a razor blade, but it's always better. If you don't have to all right. I think that's what I have to say about coating your kayak for now. Hopefully this helped to demystify this process. I know this is kind of intimidating and I'm a little intense when I teach how to do it, but it's because I want you to end up with a really good, beautiful professional-looking finished product. So I know this isn't the easiest stuff to use, but it's definitely not any harder than any other kind of fine boat building finish. And if you compare this to anything else, that's out there two and a half hours of application for something that's going to last five to ten years is pretty amazing as far as the amount of work you're putting into what you're getting for it. So I feel like it's a good value, to learn how to put this stuff on correctly. Now, before I go a couple more things, I want to mention our abrasion resistance, puncture and toxicity. Now this coating is chemically slick, which means that it won't even stick to itself after about 48 hours, and what that means is that, when your skin starts to wear out, you actually have to physically replace the entire skin. Now the good news is that takes a long time to actually happen, and it's not that big of a deal to rescan a kayak. But if you do get little spots with just a little bit of mechanical abrasion, where you're starting to see fabric. That has enough tooth to it that you can actually just use little bits of aqua seal on spots that are starting to wear through and extend the life of the skin. That way, now, as far as puncture goes, the combination of this ballistic nylon with a two-part polyurethane is just an incredibly tough puncture resistant system. I'M not saying it's impossible to puncture one of these kayaks, but I can tell you personally that after 15 years of beating these things up around rocks and surf and even getting caught on a barbed wire fence and a flood, I've never personally managed to put a Hole in one of these and I've only heard about two punctures on the water and both of those were pretty extreme circumstances. So this stuff is a lot tougher than a lot of people assume that it would be, and if you do put a hole in it there are some things you can do about that now. Finally, I want to talk about toxicity. You could see that while I was using this system, I wasn't wearing a respirator. I'Ve been exposed to this stuff for a lot of years, so I typically wear a respirator with organic vapor cartridges. But generally this is a pretty non-toxic system. It doesn't have a lot of solvents boiling off it like a lot of the single part, poly urethanes, and so, if you're, just building one boat, I think you could really go one way or the other if you're concerned get yourself a respirator with organic vapor cartridges. Okay, I think that's all I have to say for now, thanks for watching, if you're watching this on youtube. Consider hitting that like and subscribe button, maybe head over, the Cape Falcon website check out what I got going on there if you're watching this on my website. Take care have fun, building your kayak and be safe on the water. You

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Nice! I'm looking for someone to build something like this:
I have a reasonable budget if you might want to take a job.