some canoe advice

[jim.b]

ive recently removed all the crappy plasic seats and coolbox from my pelican explorer and replaced them for some proper seats and thwart from apache, doing this however has resulted in the long bracing pole down the centre to become free as it was held in place by the seats and coolbox i was thinking of just glueing it back in place with contact adhesive. would that ruin or weaken the plastic the canoe is made from in any way? i dont want to glue it in if the **** is going to fall out of my canoe

 

[Baldy-Old-Troll]

Jim I think you'll find that your boat is now going to be very flexible, I don't think that glueing the spine in place will hold, l think that you will need to fit some struts between the bottom of the seats and thwarts and the spine otherwise your boat will just flex continually.

 

[andibs]

If you've got the seats and thwarts, would you be better getting a shell from Apache ( I've got a 16 and a great boat) and outfitting it yourself

Andy

 

[jim.b]

yeah i did think about that and there is a little flex in it, i made the thwart slightly narrower than it was originally which pulled the sides in slightly and made it a little stiffer, also the seats i put in are a lot lower as i found i was sat to high with the standard ones, i had to make aluminium brackets to fit everything as the wooden ones supplied wouldnt fit and again this made it a lot stiffer than before as there was a lot of give in the plastic, i was mainly thinking end to end flex as side to side its probably better than it was before.

 

[jim.b]

If you've got the seats and thwarts, would you be better getting a shell from Apache ( I've got a 16 and a great boat) and outfitting it yourself

Andy

i did think about it but i already had the canoe and i find the apache hull a bit tippy.

 

[rancid badger]

Gluing the brace into place, probably isn't a good idea.

So:
Either,
Put the boat back together as it was, put it on ebay and sell it for whatever you can get for it, then buy an Apache hull, gunwhales and end fillets and put yourself an Apache together.

Or,
Fit pieces of wood from the thwart and seats down to the keel brace,forming a "t" shape. You'll need to form a notch in the bottom of the pieces to fit the brace, then screw through the thwart and seats to secure the new braces.

 

[Grooveski]

Do a couple of searches on Song of the Paddle. It's a common mod.
There's one, but not the one I was thinking of.