August 6, 2005

Seat Repair

The seat broke loose in my explorer again. This time it was my fault for not prepping the area properly. So to try and not make the same mistake twice I ripped out the entire seat to get at the area where it had detached and clean it up.

I also ordered some foam to shape to the bottom of the seat to go between the seat and the hull. After all, if I'm going to try and stand up in my boat, the least I can do is try and give it a little more support, right?

I roughed out the foam and wedged it and the seat back into the kayak and let it sit for a day. When I came home from work the black seat had done its work by leaving a depression in the foam showing me where I needed to take out the last bit of foam to make a perfect fit.

The seat itself was damaged and I needed to reinforce the areas that were cracked. In addition, there was a grove cut in to the hull from the front edge of the seat, so I laid down a layer of glass over the groove to make sure it didn't wear any deeper. I left these pieces to cure for the night before putting the seat back in.

The next day I used up the fiberglass tape I had but wished for a little more. On Friday I stopped by the hardware store but all they had was mat glass. I decided to use it anyway, but it was hard to work with.

After giving it a few hours to set up I put the backhand back in. One side went in easily but the starboard side proved to be a real challenge. Some of the mat fiberglass had cured in the plane that the back band strap needed to rest in. I used a saw to open the area back up and with a quick few turns of a screwdriver the kayak was whole again.

A little sanding to take off some rough edges and the kayak made the trip to the front yard and on to my car.

On Saturday I played around a bit in it. The cold I seem to be coming down with took some of the energy out before I ever got to the water. The seat seems to be a tiny bit higher. I suspect the foam keeps it from bending all the way down to the hull. The positive is I can lean back and lay flat on the rear deck now without lifting my butt out of the seat. A negative is the back band seems to be riding too low.

We'll see how long it lasts this time...

Pictures

Woody