Flaw in the Rubrail

Flaw in the Rubrail
Originally uploaded by OzzyC.

In a continuation of "back to basics" week, I will discuss this rubrail in a bit more detail.

We purchased 10-foot sections of oak, which is obviously too short for the entire canoe. We compensated for this by angle-cutting the oak sections and joining them together with epoxy. We did the joints at port-bow and starboard-stern, for load balancing. This way if we hit something that would break one joint, they both wouldn't break.

This spring, my boat hit a rock in rapids, and popped the rubrail joint. I tried patching the popped joint with gorilla glue, but that was inadequate for the job, and the joint popped again, (on a much smaller rock, at a much lower speed.)

As you can imagine, I was starting to get a little frustrated over my canoe continually "breaking." I figured it was time to do the job right, so I decided to sand and re-epoxy the joint from scratch.

Unfortunately, my daughter wanted to help, and due to a perfect storm of circumstances, I didn't quite mix the epoxy right, and it never quite set. Growing even more weary of this ongoing problem, I sunk a couple of bronze nails into the seams, figuring that would do it. That's when I sanded and painted the boat, and when I noticed the flaw in this picture. If you look VERY closely (not the best picture), you can see that there's no epoxy bonding the rubrail to the hull. Once the paint dries, but before I stain the rubrails, I will bond the rubrail to the hull with a thin line of unthickened epoxy.