Installing Skid Plates

With the hole in the stern covered with kevlar, it's time to install the skid plates.

This is the skid plate kit from Harmony: two kevlar felt pads and epoxy are the main items. Also included are sandpaper, stirring stick, sanding foams, gloves, mixing bucket and a brush.

I placed the skid plate on the stern, marked and traced its shape and position in pencil, then lightly sanded the surface within the marks. I masked the area with painter's tape and paper to catch epoxy drips. The same was done at the bow. The yellow you see is the kevlar cloth patch on the stern, not the skid plate, which hasn't been installed yet.

The epoxy was mixed, then about a quarter of it poured onto a long, flat clean piece of corrugated cardboard on which I'd already traced the shape of the skid plate. I spread the epoxy to fill the traced shape, laid the kevlar felt onto it, then used a ridged roller and a plastic spreader to mash the felt into the epoxy. When it had soaked up as much as it could, I poured another quarter of the epoxy onto the top of the felt and worked it in from above. Working quickly, I then placed the saturated felt on the canoe at the stern, and repeated the process for the bow plate.

With both plates laid in position, I used the ridged roller, plastic spreader and brush to press them down, eliminating folds and puckers and forcing out any air trapped beneath. I brushed the last drops of epoxy from the bucket and dabbed it all around the edges of the plates, poking them down with the ends of the bristles to get them to adhere tightly. (I use cheap chip brushes for most epoxy work, cutting the bristles off to about half their length to have a stiffer brush to work with.) The wet felt stretches a bit lengthwise, which is why I didn't mask the "top" end (i.e., toward the middle of the canoe). 

Once the epoxy had begun to set but before it was hard, I pulled off the masking tape and paper. Both ends came out neat. 

One slightly disturbing item: this is the cardboard on which the epoxy was poured and the felt saturated. About halfway along the wet area, you can see a bare rectangular area where the epoxy didn't wet the cardboard. This was an area previously covered by plastic packaging tape. I don't know what became of the tape: did it adhere to the bottom of the felt? Did the epoxy dissolve it? Will either of those possibilities interfere with the adhesion of the skid plate? I don't know.

The bow skid plate after the epoxy had cured.

Close-up of the skid plate after the epoxy dried. It's a fuzzy, nappy finish, which will get smoothed down with use.