I just want to share some pictures of our restoration project of an old Dagger Caption that I bought 2 years ago.

Now that Royalex is no longer available, replacement materials are not there yet concequently many canoe models will become history repairing your old canoe might be something to consider.

In 2013 I Purchased a "well used" Dagger Caption and decided to give her a thorough "make-over". She had some cracks in the bottom below the old saddles and below the old vinyl patches.
This is how she looked like when I bought her.
http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/s...=dagger+caption

We (my brother and I) decided to make it a full refurbishment job in two steps, with the aim to make her "as good as new" and give her many more years of paddling:
step 1 = strip the complete hull, repair the cracks on the inside of the hull and re-outfit the inside.
step 2 = change the vinyl gunnels with wood and repair the outside hull (add a layer of kevlar/glass on the bottom)

Step 1 was finished early last year. At this moment we are working hard on step 2 and hope to finish within 2 weeks from now when we will test paddle for a week on the Durance river in France during the European CBoats Armada..

I uploaded photo's of step 1 of the restoration project to my Flickr site, see below link.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/62121798@N...57651763290879/

(I also posted this topic on the Song of the paddle forum)

Michel

That looks like a really great Job, very professional. Hope she rewards you with a long life and even more fun on the river!

CU soon

Flo

Hi Flo, thanks for your kind words.

We now also completed replacing the vinyl gunnels with wood, white ash to add a bit more "style" and save some weight.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/62121798@N...157651763290879

But we have no reason for celebration today, as we had a MAJOR SETBACK in our restoration project...('')
As we were preparing for our last part of the project, which was to add a layer of kevlar/glass on the outside bottom of the hull along the "football" to cover the worn parts of the outer hull and compensate for added inside stiffness we notices some small new cracks on the inside hull just along the edges of our new reinforcement.

After we repaired the inside hull last year we test paddled the Caption for a week in France on river Ardèche and Drome, and it appeared she did fine. We must have overlooked these very small beginning cracks at that time.

I think we made a mistake by only adding reinforcement on the inside bottom part of the hull and not extending the inside reinforcement to above the chines to halfway the side walls. Now that the bottom is reinforced and very stiff it doesn't flex much and when sliding over rocks that cause bending forces in the shines right where we stopped with our repair...

So I'm affraid we have to think now of a repair "plan B"...
This also means the Caption will not be ready for this year ECBA yet... which I regret very much.

Sorry to hear about your setback.
I would like to have some explanatory notes at your photos on flickr. Most of them are self-explanatory, of course, but some comments would be nice.
I dont have experience with the combination of G-Flex and fibreglass. Are you sure, that in case of a heavy bump to the hull the whole lamination wont detach?

(Alles) Roger🏄🍟🚣

G-Flex is less likely to detach than any other Epoxy for sure. But adding a stiff/pull-resistant fabric to the mix doesn't help! If I were you, I'd just add Gflex and skip the whole fabric reinforcement altogether. Especially on the outside. If you must replace bits of ABS on the outside, think about replacing the whole area with ABS sheeting set in with GF and cover that up with fillered GFlex.. I'd also try imitating the foam on the inside by either using Polyurethane foaming glue or cork-filled Gflex. There may be other materials (microballs?) that get the same effect. The nice thing about the cork is that it can be compressed and come back, equal to the original spongy Royalex innards.

Regarding the gunwales, nice job! I would just be afraid of the stress risers where the gunwales end, which may end up being a problem and where the next cracks show up if you're hitting something head on, or from the side. Or maybe you still want to add decks that take them in a bit?
The gunwales can be hard to get to conform to the shape, one way of achieving this is pre-bending them a bit, ideally with heat/steam or narrowing the profile down (they're quite wide as it is and need not necessarily have all that width in the end) a bit to make for easier bending. Of course, once the relatively stiff gunwale ends and the soft-ish royalex takes over, it may still flex unless you give the RX something to hold on. I have dealt with this on PE canoes by taking the gunwales much further forward, the problem with RX is that the shapes are usually a bit wider in the end, more bulbous, to make for easier forming during manufacturing. A wooden deck plate that is set in and let's you set the shape really helps here.

Good luck! Hope you can finish it until the Armada so we can all admire your work :D

Jan

--
The hole is more than the sum of its parts.