Originally it was covered with canvas, and painted green, but some time during the 70's my uncle was going duck hunting and had it on top of his car and it was improperly secured some how and fell off on the freeway. This broke a bunch of the supports and my father and my grandfather fixed it and recovered the boat with dacron and painted it orange. The dacron was a lot lighter than the original canvas, and the 14' boat only weighed about 30 pounds when it was done.
This past year the paint had started to chip and a couple of leaks developed after going over logs, so my father and I recovered it again and painted it the original green that my grandad had painted it. It still has aircraft dacron on it, which uses a process that requires silver in the paint and a uv protectant. The dacron is the same fabric that airplanes use, and you heat shrink it and it tightens up around the frame. It's an amazing process and the boat is a little heavier now because we put extra coats of paint on it. But it still has the original frame that my grandfather built way back when, although it is a little bit crooked because we couldn't get the main beam straightened out perfectly after my uncle broke it. The boat will last another hundred years the way we've fixed it and everytime we use it it brings back memories of bass fishing in the secret ponds when I was a kid.
We've used it on Riffe lake, taken it camping and floated the Skookumchuck and Chehalis rivers in it. We also use it to troll for cutthroat in puget sound. It's an amazing little boat with a lot of history to it.
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