Hey,

This is one of those things that always seems to crop up either after the annual pilgrimage to the Alps or after a big dump of rain after a long dry spell. Contrary to what allot of folks seem to thing these days kayaks are large designed to paddle down rivers avoiding rocks and obstacles as opposed to being rock ramming machines. So its not too uncommon after head on collision with a rock to get a bent nose or a split in your boat.

Thankfully its not the end of the world as in most cases a boat can be repaired, depending on where/ how the kayak is damaged you can get it back to to being pretty close to being full strength again.

This example that I did is of a weld that had been done before that split again, I won’t mention the previous welder but it was his first attempt . In fairness I was there the day it split again and it was a fairly solid thump. So here is a very basic “how to weld your boat”

Here is what I use.

If you click on the photo above you will see a the secret weapon of the whole operation, the modified blow torch. I saw this first used a good few years back and reckon its the best bit of kit for the job.

Patent pending on this bit of custom kit

You will notice the spoon, the idea of that is to prevent the naked flame coming into contact with the plastic which cause carbonation & in turn significantly weakening the plastic.

Step one:

Use your craft knife to clean the split and to make a nice smooth surface to begin your weld on. Be careful not to go nuts here and take way too much plastic away & making the gap massive.

Of course if you are the proud owner of an NRS Wingman that also works a treat.

I then use my drill to bore a hole at either end of the split, 6mm ish bit pending on how wide your split is.

Step two:

Now we need to borrow a strip of plastic from elsewhere in the boat to help fill the gap. I always reckon some where around the side of the cockpit rip works well. Be sure that where ever you take it from is not some where you will catch your hand / dry suit when getting in and out of your boat.

Step three:

Now depending on the type of split I have often placed a small block of timber inside the boat and screwed into it from either side of the crack to strengthen the repair. I didn’t think that was necessary this time but it does work very well.

So now is time to heat up the whole front of the boat around the area that is being worked on, the heat gun does a good job of this. the plastic should start to soften up around 130 deg C if your want to be super anal about it but its fairly easy spot when the plastic starts to look “glazed”.

Step four:

Now this is where the interesting stuff starts to happen, now a word of warning don’t put your hand on the boat to see how how it feels! You will burn your self and it kinda hurts. So get the strip of plastic you cut out earlier and hold it in the your pliers and heat it up so its hot but not melting.  Now place this strip in your split.

Step five:

Now fire up your blow torch and give it a few seconds for the spoon to heat up. If this is the first time using your torch spoon do expect a few sparks/flames as the torch burns any impurities of the metal. From here on it is all down to feel and touch. Use the back of the spoon to melt the filler strip and the plastic either side of the weld.

The idea here is to bond the whole lot together as opposed to just filling the gap with melted plastic. Slow and stead will win the race here so don’t be afraid to crack out the heat gun to keep the working area warmed up.

I often use a metal chisel to help me work the plastic into the split and to try keep things tidy, it can get a bit “gooie” around the weld but stick with it and don’t be tempted to add too much heat.

Step six:

With any luck you have now managed to fill the split in your boat without melting it into a big blog or setting the plastic on fire. What I do now is use the heat gun again to heat up the whole area again to the “glazed” look and use the back of my chisel to dress the plastic into something that looks nice and tidy. Less is more here. Now we want to leave the now the hot front of your boat to cool down nice and slowly while bonding together. Don’t stress if it doesn’t look perfect just yet we will address that next.

Step seven:

Once the boat is now cool to the touch we can make it look a little prettier, hopefully if you were tidy doing your weld this won’t take a min to do. Use the heat gun again to heat up the repaired area to the point where the plastic is just becoming soft and then using the back side of the chisel to smooth out the area. The thing here is we are just working on the top layer of plastic and not wanting to heat the plastic right through.

It’s hard tell from the photo but this turned out pretty well and I reckon its a solid weld, if you have time and you want you can strip out the whole inside of the boat and try access the weld from the back to repeat the process. In my experience of doing that it’s super hard to work in such a small space without using a pencil blow torch.

Here is how mine looked from the inside.

I reckon that’s just about right and that this boat will go on to live many more days on the river.

In wrapping the whole thing up its probably easier to learn not to smash your boat into rocks that it is to repair it. But if you do damage it don’t panic too much I have seen all sorts of things brought back to life with some time and effort.

Anyway try it at your pearl… and sure as I was told when I first tried it years ago…”Its always better to learn on someone else’s boat”.

Best of luck,

Adrian