
Equipment needed:
· Hypalon CSM glue 2 part
· Hypalon material
· 80 grit sandpaper
· Round piece of wood (stick)
· Masking tape
· Water & soap
Today we’re going to show you how to repair any inflatable hypalon boat, step by step. For this tutorial, we’re going to use as a demonstration an inflatable hypalon banana boat made by us, however the process applies to any inflatable made with hypalon.
Before starting to repair, we recommend re-checking all the inflatables to detect any other leaks or damage areas. For this step we use water and soap, applying it to all the surfaces and valves. If we detect some small bubbles in different areas, this means that we have multiple leaks.
We take a round or square piece of hypalon that would cover the leak. We mark with masking tape all the damaged zones with the same shape as the hypalon patch. We proceed to eliminate all the impurities from the hypalon material with 80 grit sandpaper within the marked area. We sand this area and the hypalon patch until the material has lost all its shine but without getting too deep into the hypalon layers. Then we clean both areas really well with acetone or similar product so the surface is perfectly free of any hypalon dust. Now we can start to apply the Apex hypalon glue or a similar CSM hypalon glue on the sanded area and the patch. We then place another layer of glue after a few minutes whenever the first layer is dry. We make sure not to apply too much to avoid little pellets.
We wait until the hypalon glue dries. Then, the next step it’s to paste the patch to the inflatable dedicated area. We make sure to flatten the patch to the tube with a round piece of wood removing all possible air bubbles in between. We recommend you to deflate the tube and place a solid surface underneath the patched area to help you make a hard bound.