As I mentioned at the end of the last post, traditional Greenland hunting kayaks were covered with 3-6 seal skins, a precise and arduous process done almost entirely by women. In addition to the painstakingly stitching, aged seal fat was rubbed on the seams to maintain waterproofness.
The coating we use for our kayaks is a specially formulated two-part polyurethane designed and sold by Corey Freedman at skinboats.org.
This unique coating is 100% solids, odorless in application, is hard enough to resist moderate abrasion but flexible enough to resist cracking with the natural flex of the skin.
The product is applied wet on wet, building as many layers as is desired with a foam roller. To coat the entire kayak in one day, after coating the hull, I support it on three sheet rock screws driven into the stringers and keel while I coat the deck. (The three tiny holes are easily sealed later on.)
The entire process takes 4-6 hours depending on the number of coats and requires no additional steps. This is miraculously quick compared to fiberglass work and is a big part of why I can finish a kayak in a week.
The downside of this coating is that it yellows with age and it is not recoatable, which means the skin must be replaced after five years of hard use or 10 years of moderate use. I think that’s a pretty good lifespan for a process that takes just two days to complete.
Like any coating process, correct application is critical to prevent poor results. I have ridiculously detailed application instructions in my online kayak building course.
Build time on this step: 5 hours
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See the original post and discussion here.
