Putting it Back Together

Time to reassemble everything that was taken out or off.

The aft deck went back on, but only with a lot of prying to force it over the gunwales. Where there was access on both sides, I fastened it in with stainless bolts and nylon-insert locknuts. Where there was no access for a nut on the backside, I used aluminum pop rivets, as per the original installation. 

Contact cement was applied to the hull and to the bottom of the pedestal saddle. After an appropriate wait, the two were mated. Same for the knee pads. When trying to position the double-D-ring patch between the knee pads for the lower anchor of the knee and thigh straps, I found I couldn't get the straps to lay where I wanted them. Two things were needed, the first being to relocate one of the pairs of anchor pads on the sides of the boat (the one at the upper right in the photo). I used a heat gun and putty knife to loosen most the pad, but the area directly under the sewn-on nylon webbing wouldn't come up: I suspect it was fastened in with Aquaseal, which is a urethane and doesn't soften with heat. So holding back the part of the patch that had been loosened, I used a single-edge razor blade to carefully cut through the adhesive beneath the pads.

The other change needed to the outfitting setup was the seat height which, at 10", was too tall for me. This would have been so much easier if the saddle hadn't been glued in, but c'est la vie. Using a variety of knives, saws and rasps, I cut the seat down by more than an inch and reshaped the curve at the back.

After that, everything else went together. The thwart behind the saddle went back in with a bolt and lock-nut at each end. The knee/thigh strap patches were glued in with contact cement, along with four new D-ring patches (the round gray ones) to anchor the corners of the float bags. I also tightened up the lacing to secure the float bags.

All my previous OC-1 paddling had been done with unsuitable paddles. The paddle that I own that's about the right length has a blade that's too small. The one with a good-sized whitewater blade had a shaft that was way too long. So I took the too-long one and cut about 5" out of the shaft. Then I sized a dowel to fit tightly inside the shaft and cut it about 8" long. Slathering it with epoxy, I forced it halfway into the T-grip end, then pushed the lower part of the shaft over it, carefully aligning the T-grip and the blade before setting it to cure.

The finished, shortened paddle. Pictures of the finished canoe in the next post.