hey guys welcome back to wendell fishing darren here and today i'm going to show you how to create
that inexpensive diy keel guard for your fishing kayak here's the thing you spend a lot of money
on that fishing kayak so let's spend a little bit of time protecting that investment so you
don't get that hole ruining that fishing trip you've been planting all season long hey if you
love kayak fishing then you are in the right place every thursday at 11 45 am my videos drop and i do
fishing kayak modifications fishing out in the water for bass i sometimes do bluegill i mix it up
from time to time and i do reviews so if you like that type of thing hit that sub bell notification
i will keep them coming all right let's hop into this so i did a bunch of research on what the
best way to protect your haul and i came across a bunch of goofy videos on youtube but one of
my favorites was there's a ton of these people are like oh we're using gorilla tape to protect all my
kayak and it's working great really you think that right there is going to protect your haul against
rocks and abrasions seriously now there are a variety of nice options that you can purchase
out there um but they are pretty pricey looking at them i sell them between 140 and 150 dollars
and then there's the paragard which could run you around 40 to 90 depending on the length that you
want i was able to do this build for around 25 and it is definitely heavy duty i beat this thing up
out on the water so i was looking for a material that could take a beating and keep on kicking
and then i found it kydex this stuff is awesome it's a thermoplastic acrylic polyvinyl chloride
material and here's the thing it's so popular for four different reasons the four reasons are
it's waterproof scratch resistant it's got a rockwell hardness of 90 which means it's super
rock hard and it's moldable especially when you apply heat so now you can see why it would make
a great keel guard for your fishing kayak okay you need some tools and materials for this build
two pieces of kydex i'll throw the link in the description where you can get those
heat gun pair of gloves dremel and keep in mind here you have a cutting tool on the end um so
you can use a variety of different cutting tools this is a circular one uh two pieces of paper on
gorilla heavy duty mounting tape 60 pounds that's important i'll throw that in the link below as
well any type of tape i just happen to have this pair of scissors sharpie and some silicone 100
waterproof all right let's hop into the build step one is going to be identifying where you actually
will put the heel guards you can see here i get a lot of scuff marks especially toward the back
and man but most of the people want to kill guards right here and as you can see i got some deep
cuts i'll definitely be putting one right here should have put one of these keel guards on long
before i am right now but we'll get to it um you see i want this to lip over so i'm going to create
there there so this can lip down and then
bring this down out
so when it gets done i'll cut this out this will fold down and this will wrap around now as you can
see your lines are wonky from the trace but when you cut out your template uh you can tighten up
those lines all right double check one last time before you cut that's why i want that one to look
and this one looks good as well probably extend this one a little long
a little bit longer to use the entire piece of kydex and then it'll kind of mold over right
at the beginning of my scuffs so use this as a template uh and mark out your kydex for the cut
all right now for the fun part um basically take out your dremel or whatever cutting tool is
i put on a piece of cardboard so i can go along the cardboard if it cuts
through it doesn't cut into my workbench and so let's go ahead and make it happen
they are cut down and just sand this off really fast and make the other cuts
all right now we're going to need your heat gun your templates i sanded and watched the
software looks it looks really nice and then you're going to spend a lot of time heating
this up and molding it to the form of your boat what i'm going to do is push down on both sides
long ways it'll be bent over and then i'll start molding the corner
last and you'll see it's going to take a while but we'll get there once you get the kind of
hot dog style molded over your boat you tape it into place and you kind of start molding that
time wearing gloves so this is going to be really hot you don't want to burn yourself so here we go
can't see that it's kind of flopping around it's good still warm
when it cools it hardens which is really nice
look at that perfectly molded to boat hall
all right took about 10 minutes but man you just kind of mold it out now it's perfectly molded to
the whole of my boat because i'm the dimensions there so we'll get that in a minute now i just
got to do the second piece on the back all right so so far so good back's coming together nicely
just how i wanted it it bubbles out a little bit here so i'm gonna heat it up right here in here
and one more time down here and clamp it and let it cool it should be good another thing i'm doing
is i had some pretty deep gashes in there so i'm going to heat this up and the beauty of it once it
gets hot you can kind of press on it and i want to make sure there's no water can't get underneath my
adhesive whenever we attach the keel guard so i'm going to heat this up kind of press it down and
make sure it's nice and even and you kind of see the difference when i get down here in a second
all right as you can see is put the heat gun on there i didn't even really have to touch it just
kind of melted a little bit and made a nice smooth seal when we put our gorilla tape adhesive on it
so pretty awesome all right let's uh get this keel got on there now all right now
that you have both your molds all molded now it's time to get your gorilla tape that
you purchased off of amazon this is the stuff 60 pounds it's going to be 10 feet
so we're going to probably run three lines of tape right here and then the same thing
on this one one and two on the insides there so let's go ahead and get that done
all right as you can see i got all the gorilla tape on there side by side
nice and tight which is fine if it's not but the idea is uh
try to not let as much water in here as possible at least as matte as possible so when we get
it back on here we're going to seal the outsides with some silicone i'm just going to peel this off
make sure the area is nice and clean i put some alcohol in here to make sure it's super clean
so it's a nice nice stick there
let that dry off and then put our heel guard on all right here's the moment of truth
find the right spot try to get the
oh yeah it's nice and sticky nice and sticky
i mean if you wanted to you could probably go over the heat gun again lightly heat it
um just so it's but this isn't i mean i'd have to pop that off pretty good
i don't think that's coming off oh man it's turning out great
oh yeah it's awesome that's awesome all right that's gone a little bit difficult and click
on the peel the sides and then you have to get that on there without the sides catching first
so you've got to kind of pull it apart a bit as much you possibly can it does give a little bit um
so that's kind of where i want it down here
and actually i might get like a rubber hammer and hit it down to
make sure it's nice all right got my rubber mallet
all right all right good make sure the sides are nice and tight
yeah i can hear it popping off hear that a little bit so what i'm going to do is i'm going to run
the heat gun over this a little bit to make it a little more malleable um and then just
pushing the guard with my gloves and the stickiness should keep it from popping out
a little bit and then i'll be i'd be good to go i'll be happy with that one that's wanting to
pop off a little bit we don't want that so put heat gun to it and then we'll do the last step
all right now when i push on it i'm gonna hear it pulling back apart
so i kind of like it i like that a lot all right i got the skill guard in the back oh just for fun
i might just run heat gun on this too just to make sure it has a nice bond with stickiness underneath
i don't hear anything trying to pop up or release from the boat so i think
that looks good man that's awesome i love it looks good there let's get back here
all right one more step all right the last steps is getting yourself some silicone and
making sure you go around all the edges here we do not want water any water getting up in there
um your boat flexes and if water gets up in there it's just going to pop that seal
and so buy some silicone this one's got a 30 minute water ready it's not going to shrink
or crack and uh instead of getting the big huge tubs of it with the caulking gun i want
a little bit more dexterity so i got something small here so let's go ahead and cut this up
and go to work
all right there's the end result sealed 30 minutes later man looking good not coming off there kydex
man this is awesome and there you have it your inexpensive diy kill guard for under 25
if you love this video if it was helpful to you in any ways please hit that like button
sub and bell notification i will keep them coming alright guys thanks for watching see ya