Liz doing the final finishing pull on her new F1. This is a bit tricky to get right because you have to wait until the coating has set enough that you can smooth down imperfections without pulling off material, but it still has to be fluid enough that it will self level afterwards without leaving drag marks. The pressure and also the angle on the card just depends on how much the coating has set.
Fortunately by this point on the kayak you’ve done this at least six times so you should have the timing dialed in perfectly!
The coating here is the two-part polyurethane that’s sold by skinboats.org It goes on four coats wet on wet and the entire boat is done in one day. When applied correctly and paired with a quality skin usually lasts about 5 to 10 years on a kayak with no re-coating and no maintenance, which is about as close to a miracle as finishing gets in the boat world.
It’s a bit tricky to work with but after 20 years of working with it I’ve developed coding instructions that even first time builders can use with good results. I’m constantly updating those instructions so right now we are re-shooting them for the kayak building course to incorporate new techniques for even better results.
Color is our Burnt Sienna (specifically the stuff we sell, there’s a huge range of color in burnt sienna pigments). We mixed 4 teaspoons into 44 ounces of the part B of the two-part polyurethane, and this kayak has four coats on the deck and the hull.
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