Another long work day. We coated the river kayak today and used the opportunity to reshoot our kayak coating videos to update our ever-evolving tips and instructions and to get clearer views of the process.
The coating we use on our kayaks is the two-part polyurethane sold by Corey Freedman at the Skinboat School. It goes on wet on wet and at the end of five hours (unless you’re trying to film it) you’ve got a robust coating that will last 5 years of regular use with no additional maintenance. When you consider the totality of price, toxicity, ease of application, and durability I really don’t think there’s anything better out there.
Just like any finishing process though there are a LOT of things that can trip you up, leading to less than satisfactory results. Lately I’ve been experimenting with adding a lot more coats for extra durability and as far as I can tell there’s really no upper limit to how much of this you can put on, as long as you let the material stiffen in between coats. For this boat I put 5 thick coats on the hull and 3 on deck.
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