Sealing the bottom of a kayak

Keith1138

Keith1138

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2015
Location
Harrisburg NC
I've decided to fix up my kayak some for fishing. I went ahead and resealed all of the dry storage rings and rod holders. Now I'm working on the bottom of the kayak. I used this thing for two years in the mountains sliding over rocks so the bottom has alot of surface scratches and a few decent size ones.

I'm looking for a product that would preferably be a spray on that would provide a little more protecting and keep any of the scratches for getting worse.

I was thinking about flex seal but I have never used it before and I am unsure of how smooth it sprays on.

I'm going to spray the entire bottom up to the water line so it doesnt look too junky.

Any advice would be appreciated.
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I've used the harbor freight plastic welder --both the older cheaper one and the much nicer newer style more expensive model-- to fix the bottom of boats with good luck. Shave some material off of some of the mold lines inside the boat and use them to weld/fix the deep gouges. The rest of those scratches are nothing to worry about. Something like flex seal just gonna add weight and drag and nothing gonna stick to that poly the boat is made of anyway.
 
It's most likely HDPE, which is the most common plastic for stuff like that. It's a low surface energy plastic, so almost nothing adheres to it. Use a plastic welder if you need to fill anything. You can get weld rods of HDPE, strips/sheets, or use whatever you have kicking around the house like a milk carton (look at the recycling symbol, it will tell you what it is). The worst problem you'll have is color matching, if you care about things like that on the bottom of a kayak.

You can fix cracks/splits with a plastic welder as well, if you find any of those. Just drill the ends of the crack first to stop crack propagation in the base plastic.
 
Last edited:
technologyteacher said:
I used flex seal on a canoe. However I sprayed the inside of the boat so it wouldn’t get scraped off when it hit rocks in the river
Click to expand...
Spraying the inside of this kayak would be a pain.

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braxton357 said:
I've used the harbor freight plastic welder --both the older cheaper one and the much nicer newer style more expensive model-- to fix the bottom of boats with good luck. Shave some material off of some of the mold lines inside the boat and use them to weld/fix the deep gouges. The rest of those scratches are nothing to worry about. Something like flex seal just gonna add weight and drag and nothing gonna stick to that poly the boat is made of anyway.
Click to expand...
That's what I've read but all of the articles were from when it first came out.

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I think I'm just gonna try to plastic weld the 3 fairly deep cuts to keep them from cracking. This kayak isnt an expensive one for the style. So I'm not looking to spend alot of money on it.

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Would it actually crack? I have several places on my big kayak that are worse than any of your pics and I have never worried about it. My plan is to worry about it when it starts taking on enough water for me to notice.
 
Used a product called wetlander on the bottom of the jet boat, (what they use on airboats in swamps). I don't know how well it seals, but duck tape won't stick to it.
 
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