The coating I use is the 2 part polyurethane sold by skinboats.org. This catalyzed 100% solids product is super tough, relatively non-toxic, relatively inexpensive, and lightning fast compared to any other way you can finish a kayak. The downsides are that it’s not UV resistant and it’s also not recoatable.
Just like any finish, there are LOTS of ways to screw this up so this part of my building course is filled with lots of direct eye contact dire warnings to actually follow the instructions, which seems to be sufficient for about 85% of the male population.
My application process is 3 to 4 coats on the bottom wet on wet, then I drive sheet rock screws into the keel and chines, turn the boat over and put 3 coats on the deck, fill any stitching holes, and that’s it. Let cure for 24 to 48 hours, go paddling. That’s damn near a miracle compared to almost any other type of boat finish.
Because it will still stick to itself within 24 hours, something I’ve been experimenting with lately is putting extra coats on the bottom for durability and sometimes taping off just the bottom of the boat to do that. Whether this makes sense or not just depends on how heavily you plan to use the boat. With reasonable care 3 to 4 coats will last a decade.
For this build I am mixing rare earth pigment directly into the coating as opposed to dying the skin with acid dye before coating. If you’re curious about the advantages and disadvantages of both coloring methods I did a post about that a few weeks ago and also put up a super comprehensive YouTube video on our the Cape Falcon Kayak channel.
I’m really pushing the envelope right now by adding more pigment than is recommended to try to figure out how much is too much. That’s really most of what my job is, just taking risks and making mistakes so I can tell our students how to avoid them.
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