Yo Kudzu

I skinned my little recovery kayak with Polyester. I chose that because I could buy it locally in New Zealand and my buddies had sucessfully skinned their kayaks with it.

Basically I understand that polyester is directionally stable. Subsequently it is a bit harder to sew on because there is always a lot of tension as you sew. And it is hard on your fingers. The plus side is that there doesn't seem to be as much post-sewing wrinkle problems.

Also my polyester and the urethane coating I used resulted in a rough texture finish which doesn't bother me, but isn't as cool as option b:

Option B: Ballistic Nylon from Dyson fabrics in Ballingham. Nylon seems to stretch much more than polyester. It is probably easier to sew, but it is recommended to moisten the nylon as you sew which helps you get more tension into the skin. Also some of the 'weave filling' polyurethanes like Coelan result in a very smooth skin finish.

But like I said above some people say that at times nylon skins wrinkle under certain climatic conditions, but this wrinkling just looks bad and doesn't affect performance much.

I bought some ballistic Nylon from George Dyson and got him to air freight it to New Zealand. In the end there wasn't much difference in price between the locally sourced polyester and the name brand imported George Dyson Ballistic nylon which has the extra advantage of giving me bragging rights when people ask me what the skin is.

But I haven't built the boat or skinned it with the nylon yet, so I can't comment on what it is like to skin a boat with nylon.

Here is a website on my recovery skin on frame build with a spiel about how I skinned with polyester:

http://piratepetester.googlepages.com/recoverysofbuild

Cheers Pete