I have taken up the sport of Kayaking out on Lake Chapala, and am finding it marvelously more technical and challenging than I had imagined. For example, did you know that the maximum speed in knots of a displacement hull is 1.37 times the square root of the waterline in feet? You could put an outboard motor on the back of my kayak and it still wouldn't go faster than 6.5 mph. And that saving six ounces on the weight of your paddle (that savings will cost you about $30 per ounce) saves you from lifting 675 pounds every hour as you paddle? (My paddle sells for $400.) Or that efficient paddling technique requires that you do not use your arms as a source of power? They just transmit the power you generate when you brace your legs and rotate your torso; you use your hands on the paddle shaft as pivot points.

As you can see from the photo, my kayak is a narrow, high-performance boat with the inevitable lack of stability tradeoff. It was funny when I showed up at the kayak club with this $3,000 boat on top of my car. They just knew that here was an experienced kayaker. Then, when I told them that my total experience was that one time, five years ago, I had sat in the kayak when it was sitting on the garage floor of the lady we bought it from (I say "we", but SWMBO bought it for me as a present; she has decades of experience), the kayak club commodore wouldn't let me take it out. He very wisely had me start out in one of the wide plastic recreational kayaks, then each session moving up to more and more advanced boats until finally I was allowed to use my own. And what a difference! Like transitioning from a Ford Galaxy station wagon to a sports car. The first few outings in my own boat were scary, until I finally learned that my boat was not an evil-minded machine whose primary goal was to put me upside down in the water. That's where I learned about primary and secondary stability... but we won't go there at this time.

Anyway, now that I'm through bragging and reminiscing, here's the question. I wear leather open-fingered bicycling gloves when I paddle, and of necessity these gloves become completely water-soaked on every expedition. They started out baby-skin soft, and now after about 50 soakings they are so stiff and scratchy I could probably refinish furniture with them, skipping the sandpaper. What can I do to restore the original softness of this good quality, very thin leather?

tanstaafl.

Use one of those shoe-polish creams the nourishes the leather? Then coat them with this stuff (starting at 58 secs)
(great topic BTW! - not that I know anything about it, but you always seem to come up with original ones )

You could try Neatsfoot oil. One of my sisters, who is extremely experienced in the use of horses, recommended this to me when I asked a similar question some years ago about care of leather steering wheel covers. The horsey types use it extensively for treating saddles, etc, which also get wet quite a lot.

pca

That is an amazing video demonstration. However, at $600 per gallon, and dangerous enough that it is only sold for industrial uses, I guess I'll have to pass.

If you haven't done so, do watch that demo!

tanstaafl.

I've tried "Lexol" (a brand of leather conditioner) that contains Neatsfoot oil, but it only helped until the next time the gloves got wet. From the manufacturer's description at Amazon.com: "You do not have to clean the leather every time you condition, but you must condition every time you clean it."

I shouldn't be so concerned about it, as soon as the gloves get wet they are nice and soft again... until they dry.

tanstaafl.

Connolly Hide Food is what I used on my Jaguar leather. It kept it nice and soft in so cal heat.

Well, it's also available in hand sprayers (click "products"), which should be more than adequate for the surface you need to cover. About $30 for the bottom layer spray and +/- double that for the top layer spray. Not exactly cheap, but still do-able I think.

Unless you paddle fast enough to get the kayak planing...

Remember the pictures from the Empeg meet in Cambridge, with the punting on the River Cam? The Klepper I had there is pretty much the equivalent of an aircraft carrier both in terms of manouverability and speed (unless you have a nuclear-powered turbine engine), but it was designed to carry 2 commandos and all their equipment and weapons...

..

..

Ah, yes, green kayak in green pea soup

Forget the gloves! What do you suppose the effect of this stuff would be if sprayed on the hull of my kayak? Do you think there is any chance that it might significantly reduce the drag of the hull as it goes through the water? A 5% reduction in drag would be an enormous boost in performance.

So, are there any hydrodynamicists here? Would this silly idea work?

One set of the hand sprayers would cover my hull (40 square feet) with about 20 square feet of coverage left over for abrasion touch-up. HOWEVER... after a bit of research I am pretty sure that that € 73 price is just for the bottles. Then, I'd have to spend an additional € 312 for the 1-liter (minimum quantity) bottom and top coat chemicals. That's $500 USD, more than I care to spend on an experiment. Then, the reviews I have seen on the hand spray bottles are less than encouraging. The bottom coat chemical is too viscous and streams rather than sprays. Note that these reviews are for different (but similarly expensive) bottles sold by Amazon, perhaps the genuine French-made bottles are better. Opinion seems to be, however, that you need a decent quality pressurized sprayer to make it work.

The product looks miraculous if it works as advertised, and I suspect that it does. But it does NOT seem to be meant for private, home use, and some of the distributing websites stress that point.

tanstaafl.

I don't know why, but I have this silly idea that all it would do is make your kayak tip over a lot quicker because the surface tension would have changed. (no idea if this holds any truth or not - it's just my impression).


That's not correct. The price of the spray bottles is including the Ultra Ever Dry stuff in it. It only contains 250ml, that's all. (the price is indeed one fourth of the price of one liter of the stuff)


Now, this I can believe. The distribution effect of a spray can never be equally even as the distribution effect of a pressurised sprayer. So yes, I too believe for the best effect, the hand sprayers option is not the best one.

I might just buy a set just to try it out though, I'm very curious if this stuff really works as good as it seems. Problem is I don't really have a good use for it. Maybe on the windshield of the car. Never having to use windshield wipers seems cool. But not really 73 euro of cool. Mmmm... must think harder for a practical use.

Do you have a source? All the online stores I've found sell the hand sprayers empty.


Ultra Ever Dry is not a transparent coating, so putting it on your windshield may not be the best idea you've ever had.

Follow this link and click "products". It says: "capacity 250 ml", which is no guarantee of course, but the can next to it which contains 1 liter (and which costs 4x as much as the spray) also says "capacity 1 Liter". I could maybe believe it about the empty sprays, but it makes no sense whatsoever selling empty cans, which is they reason I believe the sprays are also filled.


Ah! VERY good point!

Uhhh... yeah. What HE said.

tanstaafl.

Ah, I suppose those could be filled, given the prices, and sizes of the containers. This is the closest I see to the same product [edit: for the North American market], just based on description, and it explicitly says there is no product contained in the sprayers.

Somehow this stuff reminds me of the high-tech "waxes" available for X-country skiing. Toxic to the environment.

A Bad Idea(tm) for a Kayak.

Cheers