After seventeen years of dragging this Hobie Mirage across launch "beaches", including many rugged and rocky ones, the stern end of the keel had been ground paper thin and began to leak from a small crack.
Seems like a warranty issue but I decided to fix it anyway. I have a Harbor Freight plastic welder, Hobie has one as well. Will be using plastic lids from food containers for repair material.
The plan is to patch the keel and build up material in layers using metal screen. The first piece of screen is bigger than the hole in the keel, melted into the kayak hull plastic and filled in with layers of repair plastic. The brown stuff is burned plastic from the plastic welder. Clean the welder more often or sandpaper the plastic between repair plastic layers to prevent this.
I kept adding thin layers of repair plastic to make sure the plastic was welded to the previous layers along with three pieces of metal screen to reinforce and hold everything together. Layer after layer until the keel was repaired and good to go.
With the kayak being seventeen years old, I'm not worried about cosmetics. Continuing to drag the kayak across the rocks will put the finishing touches on the kayak repair.
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Waterman at Work - Kayak Fishing Photos, Video,Kayak Rigging -
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