: Are you suspicious that insufficient curing was an issue?

I have been thinking this over, and you have probably landed on the right path here. The cans of this material usually state that it should be applied on a hot, sunny, day. I assume it needs both the temperature and the UV to do a good job of curing it.

I'm also going to guess that the problem was mainly with the first coat, and that you might not be able to do much about it right now. that is, further heat or UV might not get through to hlep it cure more, or bond tighter to the nylon.

Sounds like Rick may have the best cure for the moment, though. Paint over any areas where the stuff comes off, being sure that you let it cure well before putting on a second or third coat. Keep it warm and give it lots of sunlight. (Hope those conditions are more common by you than they are by me.)

If you are peeling off sheets of the stuff, and exposing the bare fabirc, then a thinned -- maybe a considerably thinned -- "first" coat might be a good idea. Hopefully this would let some more of the elastomeric material soak in among the cloth fibers and bond to them. Light sanding was suggested, and that sounds good to me, too.

Adding a few more coats can go either way: it might give you a thicker, more durable, and less flexible coating which would not peel off as easily. Or, it might just give a thicker coating with a bad bond to the fabric, which is now strong enough on its own to allow you to peel it off in larger pieces.

Another option: Muslin reinforcing. we know the material woks fine with cotton canvas, so it should be fine with a lighter cotton fabric, too. Muslin is too flimsy to serve as a skin by itself, but it might serve to reinforce and stabilize the elastomeric coating.

Paint a few feet of the boat, including the areas where the rubber peeled off, and embed a piece of inexpensive muslin in the wet roofing compound. You can paint right over it. This should form a reinforced patch which bridges the area where the initial attempt did not work well. A few more coats over this and you won't be able to see the edges of the patch. If you use a few strips of muslin as long as the boat, and maybe a foot wide, you can go over the entire skin, overlapping the edges fo these strips by a few inches, making the skin thicker and stronger. Kind of like a reinforced radial tire.

In a worst case/best case scenario, the muslin reinforced elastomeric skin will peel off the nylon like a snake skin comes off a snake. In this case your nylon will have provided a wonderful mold. Add another layer of muslin and more elastomeric material and build this up to a thickness that you can use as the kayak skin, without the nylon. While you are at it, you can make a spare, which you need only add a zipper or laces to for your folder.

PGJ