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PostPosted: April 15th, 2020, 2:15 pm 
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Joined: June 28th, 2001, 7:00 pm
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Location: Freeland, Maryland USA
Another silly shop experiment, which I know a few folks here enjoy.

I have long been curious about how much weight different canoe outfitting attachments would hold. With shelter-in-shop time, and a variety of attachments in shop stock, a long awaited experiment was in store.

A dozen different attachments, installed different ways; pop riveted, screwed through vinyl, wood and aluminum gunwales, pop riveted through holes drilled in Royalex or glued directly to the RX.

Thousands of pounds of weights suspended over the course of 10 days; I discovered that incremental weights each need to hang for a while to reach their eventual failure point. Some failed quite slowly, most failed quite loudly when hundreds of pounds of weights crashed to the floor.

I have been outfitting canoes for a couple decades now, and like to think I have gotten better at it, but have never seen comparative attachment numbers, even crude as mine are. I was comforted by a few things, learned a few things I will always do, discovered a few things I will never do again and found some surprises.

Wayyyy too long and 100+ photo heavy to repost; the full experiment is over on the CanoeTripping.net DIY board.
(Admins: I hope it is OK to redirect like that. Please let me know if I have overstepped)

Brief as I can make a photo-less summary of that 9 day project; not sure the cut & paste formatting will appear on a CCR post.

Attachments, Failure Weights, How Failed and Suppositions as to why things failed.

Nylon webbing pop riveted through vinyl gunwale, 30lbs
Webbing pulled through 3/16” rivet head

Nylon webbing with fender washer pop riveted through vinyl gunwale, 60 lbs
3/16” Rivet pulled out of vinyl gunwale

Poly webbing pop riveted through vinyl gunwale, 70 lbs
Webbing pulled through 3/16” rivet head

Poly webbing with fender washer pop riveted through vinyl gunwale, 80 lbs
3/16” rivet pulled out of vinyl gunwale

Thoughts and suppositions:
Webbing loops need a washer under the pop rivet. OK, I already knew that.
Thin nylon webbing will pull through a washer more easily than thick poly webbing. No surprise there either.
3/16” pop rivets through thin (1/16” thick) vinyl gunwale will pull through the gunwale between 60 and 80lbs. The thicker/sturdier the webbing the more weight it held, perhaps because the weight was less likely to pull sideways, bending and sheering the pop rivet.

Grommet strap pop riveted through vinyl gunwale, 114 lbs
3/16” rivet pulled out of gunwale

Thoughts and suppositions:
OK, not a fair comparative test, the weights were pulling on the grommet strap sideways, not straight down. It definitely takes more weight to pull a pop rivet from a vinyl gunwale in that orientation. I am still impressed that the grommet strap itself held 114lbs

Nylon pad eye with dual pop rivets through vinyl gunwale, 163lbs
One of two 3/16” rivet pulled out of gunwale.

Thoughts and suppositions:
Two pop rivets are better than one. And I’m more a fan of those nylon pad eyes than ever; those are where my swivel snap Surf to Summit back bands are attached.

Weird plastic webbing connector (no pop rivet, hung via webbing), 95 lbs
Plastic broke

Thoughts and suppositions:
I dunno, whatever that skinny thingamadoodle was made of it held an impressive amount of weight. I only used it because I had one in the parts box. The type of plastic, nylon, derlin, etc obviously makes a strength difference.

Plastic Cable clamp pop riveted through vinyl gunwale with 3/16” pop rivet, 41.4lbs
Plastic clamp broke

Thoughts and suppositions:
Way more weight than I thought one of those would hold. The elongation before failure should have been no surprise.

Spray cover stud and mini SS D-ring pop riveted through Royalex sheet with 1/8” pop rivet, 124.5lbs
Rivet broke

Spray cover stud and webbing loop with 1/8” pop rivet on Royalex sheet, 171.5lbs
Rivet broke

Thoughts and suppositions:
Wow! A lot more weight than I would have predicted using a 1/8” pop rivet. Backing up spray cover studs is now a given.

Mini SS D-ring with 1/8” pop rivet affixed to aluminum gunwale, 82.5 lbs
Rivet broke

Webbing loop with 3/16” pop rivet on aluminum gunwale, 55 lbs
Rivet broke

Thoughts and suppositions:
Note the reduction pop rivet failure weights. I believe the aluminum gunwale helped sheer the aluminum pop rivet. And that was pulling straight down; pulling sideways might be even worse.

I tried using 3/16” steel pop rivets once. That was a nope with my hand pop rivet gun; I couldn’t even begin to squeeze them closed. I have a box of 24 left, 3/16” dia X 3/8” long, large flange steel. Free to good home.

Under-inwale D ring plastic tab with 3/16” pop rivet, 151lbs
Plastic tab tore.

Thoughts and suppositions:
Again, seriously stronger than I would have thought. A decent solution for under aluminum gunwales.

Eye screw in wood gunwale, 76.5lbs
Eye screw hole straightened out (long before weight limit was reached)

Thoughts and suppositions:
The eye screw loop straighten out, probably starting at 50lbs or so. Kinda predictable.

Cable clamp screwed in wood gunwale, 51.5 lbs
Plastic clamp broke

Thoughts and suppositions:
The elongation was comical to behold, but even those winky attachments held more weight than I anticipated.

Webbing loop screwed in wood gunwale with cup washer, 282.5 lbs
Webbing tore through cup washer

Webbing loop screwed in wood gunwale with flange washer, 320 lbs
Webbing tore through flange washer

Thoughts and suppositions:
Those both held a lot of weight. Flange washers helps. Better webbing would have helped as well. Dabbing epoxy in the screw holes made no difference, except that I couldn’t back the screws out when done.

Pad eyes screwed in wood gunwale (with smaller screw heads), 146 to 157 lbs
Screw heads pulled through nylon pad eyes

Pad eye screwed in wood gunwale (with larger screw heads), 300+ lbs
Nothing failed, I just gave up, although that pad eye was bent like crazy.

Thoughts and suppositions:
Size does matter, at least when it comes to screw heads in nylon pad eyes. Again, nylon pad eyes, with two pop rivets or screws, will hold a tremendous amount of weight. Also Mike will give up at 300lbs weight and call it good.

Vynabond and hard plastic D-ring on Royalex sheet, 127.5 lbs
Hard plastic pad popped off cleanly

G/flexed hard plastic pad D-ring on Royalex sheet, 226 lbs
Hard plastic pad broke free, taking some vinyl RX skin with it.

Thoughts and suppositions:
Hard, rigid plastic pads adhered to flexible Royalex do not make for a good combination. I’m thinking there is a reason those hard plastic D-ring pads fell out of use in favor of more flexible vinyl pad R-rings


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PostPosted: April 15th, 2020, 11:46 pm 
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Joined: June 20th, 2001, 7:00 pm
Posts: 3928
Location: Toronto, Ontario Canada
Thanks for the Coles Notes version......

_________________
"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915


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PostPosted: April 16th, 2020, 11:09 am 
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Joined: June 28th, 2001, 7:00 pm
Posts: 2909
Location: Freeland, Maryland USA
recped wrote:
Thanks for the Coles Notes version......


Recped, it still took almost a thousand words in Coles Notes (Cliff Notes in the US) to describe each test piece, failure weight and what failed, and the bold/underlined/italics formatting cut & pasted from Word on that synopsis did not appear when I posted.

The 100+ photos in the long-form write up are as revealing as the descriptions. Some of the nylon attachments elongated to comical extremes before breaking.

50lbs on a thick nylon cable clamp

ImageP4100018 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

300lbs on a nylon pad eye

ImageP4100006 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

There will be a Part B of the experimental weight testing eventually, including vinyl pad D-rings. And side release buckles, both good ones from ITW-Nexus and cheap Chinese versions.

Part of my quick and dirty way to quickly secure a large dry bag or etc is to run a webbing strap with side release buckles through a D-ring on the bottom and connect/disconnect the buckles on top.

I have a lot of faith in vinyl pad D-rings, I’ve briefly lifted a canoe off the ground via a single D-ring before just to see, and even the (poorly designed) hard plastic D-ring pad held 226lbs.


I’m convinced the side release buckles will fail long before the D-ring pad, and since I sometimes use buckles and straps to help secure gear I oughta know which ones work best.


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PostPosted: April 16th, 2020, 2:22 pm 
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Posts: 3928
Location: Toronto, Ontario Canada
Mike McCrea wrote:
recped wrote:
Thanks for the Coles Notes version......


Recped, it still took almost a thousand words in Coles Notes (Cliff Notes in the US)



That was a test, a test which you passed, you are now given permission (when legal) to cross the US/CA border in search of paddling ground (water).

Please include dropping by my garage on your way, I have some boats in need of your expertise! :rofl:

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"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915


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PostPosted: April 16th, 2020, 2:26 pm 
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Joined: January 11th, 2005, 4:58 pm
Posts: 2286
Location: Manitoba
I’m enjoying this and looking forward to the part B results.

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http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 


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PostPosted: April 16th, 2020, 4:50 pm 
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Joined: February 24th, 2002, 7:00 pm
Posts: 589
Location: HFX, Nova Scotia canada
Boredom induced science. I like it. Always wondered how much force a float bag puts on the individual plastic pad eyes. Coupled with the three D rings that hold the end bags in place I think that everything is plenty strong.
Great work!


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PostPosted: April 17th, 2020, 10:18 am 
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Joined: June 28th, 2001, 7:00 pm
Posts: 2909
Location: Freeland, Maryland USA
recped wrote:
That was a test, a test which you passed, you are now given permission (when legal) to cross the US/CA border in search of paddling ground (water).

Please include dropping by my garage on your way, I have some boats in need of your expertise!


I will take you up on the invitation to visit Canada once restrictions ease.

Dropping by your garage to help with boats, eh, not so much. I have tried working on friend’s boats while travelling. Even when I packed all of the tools and parts and materials I thought necessary there were always things back in my shop hundreds of miles away that I needed. I managed to cob together solutions, but it would have been faster and easier back home.

Always happy to have friends visit me with their boats, but until I start on a second career as an itinerate outfitter, driving a box truck converted into an outfitting shop, I’ll do that work at home.

With fewer outfitters and repair shops in business that could be a business opportunity. Parts + labor + mileage?


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PostPosted: April 17th, 2020, 10:35 am 
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Joined: June 28th, 2001, 7:00 pm
Posts: 2909
Location: Freeland, Maryland USA
scoops wrote:
Always wondered how much force a float bag puts on the individual plastic pad eyes. Coupled with the three D rings that hold the end bags in place I think that everything is plenty strong.


I think plenty strong as well. I have not seen many failures with properly installed D-rings and float bag straps and lacing. Hard to imagine anything failing with something like full-on Mike Yee outfitting. Some of his techniques and strategies transfer well to tripping canoe outfitting.

https://www.mikeyeeoutfitting.com/

The last D-ring failure I heard about was less a D-ring pad issue than a testament to the strength of high quality float bags. IIRC a guy had left inflated float bags in his roof racked canoe for a day or two. Warm sunny days or two.

One float bag swelled and over expanded to the point that it ripped a vinyl pad D-ring off, taking some Royalex skin with it. I was already cautious about float bags swelling in the sun/heat, but that tale of woe reinforced it.


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