Tumpline
LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD. PHOTO: FRANCIS VACHON
[ CANOES ] Hull Revolution
If you’ve been living under a rock rather than scraping over them, you may not know that Royalex canoes are in short supply. Manufacturer PolyOne announced last
summer that it was calling it quits on the long-time favored hull material of whitewater and recreational canoes. Production of Roy- alex sheets ceased in March. The announce- ment sent the paddling community into a Royalex-boat-buying frenzy. Outfitters are bulking up their fleets while enthusiasts are buying backups of favorite models. Everyone is wondering about the future of the sport. Jacques Chassé, owner of Esquif Canoes,
thinks he has the magic bullet. Beginning this fall, Esquif will begin replac-
ing Royalex in its canoe line with a brand- new, in-house-made material they are calling T-Formex. According to Chassé, paddlers can expect
the same indestructability and performance of Royalex for approximately the same price. And he claims T-Formex will be 10 percent lighter and 20 times more abrasion resistant than Royalex.
22 | Canoeroots
Why Jacques Chassé believes his new material is better than Royalex and will save canoeing as we know it “Seventy-five to 80 percent of our boats
are now made from Royalex. We had no choice but to innovate,” says Chassé. “It’s not a secret I had been asking the manu- facturer to improve their material but they weren’t interested. They’d been making Roy- alex for the last 35 years and there’s a lot of new plastic and new technology.” Chassé is building a 6,000-square-foot
T-Formex factory within Esquif’s existing 15,000-square-foot warehouse in southern Quebec. “Because so many of our canoes were
made from Royalex, we needed to find a ma- terial that could be used in the same mold- ing stations in which the Royalex boats are shaped,” says Chassé. Switching to T-Formex will not require any re-tooling of this boat building operation. The same workshop will be able to produce the usual 20 to 25 canoes per day. Like Royalex, T-Formex is manufactured
into sheets using foam core, ABS plastic and another outer material Chassé won’t dis- close. These are layered together to create
a reinforced, multi-laminate sandwich that can withstand years of abuse. At the time of publication, Chassé had
just recently approached other canoe manu- facturers. Before going public he wanted to let them know he had a new material com- ing and is hoping that T-Formex will replace Royalex in their canoe lines as well. No commitments had been made at the time of printing this issue of Canoeroots. In the meantime, Chassé is completing his facto- ry-within-a-factory and setting up his op- eration to manufacture the T-Formex sheets needed to supply Esquif’s fleet. “T-Formex is the only alternative to Roy-
alex I know about,” says Chassé, adding that his first T-Formex prototype canoe hit the water mid-April. “I have very modest fore- casts, but I’m pretty sure once the manufac- turers and public see the properties of the material, everyone will step up and want to work with it. It’s the much improved mate- rial we’ve been waiting for.” —KP
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