Royalex Canoes, Material

Naturally tough,
flexible, and buoyant
Although you can't see it from the outside, Royalex is not a simple, homogenous material such as polyethylene and most other plastics used to make canoes. Royalex itself is an engineered construction of multiple layers of various materials which are carefully chosen and fused together to create the desired performance characteristics.

1.) Exterior vinyl skins (inside and out) give a Royalex canoe its color, protect it against abrasion, and repel UV rays. If you scratch a Royalex hull, you will reveal a different color, and that is because the interior layers are made of differing materials than the skins.

2.) ABS substrate layers inside the vinyl skins impart great strength to the hull, and give high resistance to impacts.

3.) In the center, a closed-cell, expanded-foam core gives excellent form holding, and makes the canoe naturally buoyant. We do not put separate flotation tanks in Royalex models because the material itself will float.

The diagram above is a conceptual portrayal of the simplest-possible form of Royalex, having one core layer, two substrates, and two skins. In truth, more layers of each are nearly always used. In our canoes, we vary the numbers of layers to suit specific areas of the hull, giving higher abrasion resistance in certain places, greater flexibility in others, and so forth. To learn more about this, see Royalex Canoes, Structure.