Faber canoe

There are 2 brands of canoes which are my least favorite to do restoration and repair to. Faber and Tremblay, no fault of the canoe or design both very well built canoes. The 2 companies used Verolite as the material to cover the canoes with. It is a vinyl impregnated canvas, and this is where the trouble begins.

The Verolite doesnt let the canoe breath like regular canvas does, it makes a perfect enviroment for mold and rot to begin. When I lived on Vancouver Island , it being a wet climate to begin with made this a nightmare. Allot of the times the ribs actually rotted so badly they turned to dust. The varnish was the only thing keeping the dust in the shape of a rib.

Below is a picture of a piece of Verolite from this Faber canoe. The canvas itself is gone and all thats left is the vinyl material.









In most cases the Verolite canvas will cause the top row of planking as well as the rib tops to rott badly. However in this case the rib tops were just a little soft so epoxy saturating them was needed.  Anywhere the rib was damaged badly a mixture of epoxy and saw dust was used to build the top back up.

This canoe also had a few cracked ribs, but were not causing any stress on the planking. So to try and keep the ribs the same, repairs were done to the back side of them.

 

Allot of planking was replaced in the bottom, new outer gunwales,sanding and new varnish brought this Faber canoe back to life.