Hobie Mirage Adventure

How to buff out or eliminate bottom scratches from running onto rocks.

This not a reply.... somehow for the question before it was omitted that the scratches are on the hull of a Hobie Adventure kayak. Youtube posing show using a heat gun to smooth them out..is that advisable? This all just esthetic, as none of the catches are deep , just unsightly.

I would be a little careful with a heat gun, you are liable to warp the hull with the heat gun if you don't know what your doing. Also if you have ever worked with candle wax you know what happens , drip drip...then all of a sudden you have a gaping hole to contend with. On deep scratches you can fill them with the Hobie welder and matching filler rod that hobie dealers supply. Smaller scratches it's best to just leave them, they don't hurt a thing. You can however scrape any scratches out with a single edge razor blade held vertically and swiped back and forth rapidly. The plastic comes off like snow and you can quickly rub the material away around the scratch to get rid of the scratch. The finish from scraping is a very nice clean like new finish. Scraping only removes a few thousandths of material and you can likely scrape your hull several hundred times before wearing thru the hull (about 15 yrs worth of scraping), i only clean my hull up once every yr or two and thats it. The hulls are very soft plastic and just normal use scratches them up. Plus it's very time consuming to scrape the whole hull, six months later it will look the same again. Any kind of sanding just makes a huge mess.
Hope this helps
FE

They are so commonplace and frequent that it's almost wasted effort. The next trip out you'll get more...

Thank you for the replies....I will use the razor to just smooth out the edges as none are deep, just landing on rocky beaches. I waxed to whole kayak...and the smallest scratches are more evident as the accumulated wax makes them stand out.

I guess we cannot treat kayak bottoms as we do a BWM paint job, where any minor scratch bothers us.

By the way. is there a published thickness on the hull? . I guess you are right about the minor scratches taking 15 yrs to actually wear into the hull a millimeter at the time.

When I used to paddle fiberglass/Kevlar sea kayaks, I thought rotomolded boats were tough as nails. And, although I hate to scrape the bottom of our AIs on a rough beach, I still look at them as tough, tough, tough.

Keith

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2015 AI 2, 2014 Tandem

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