Rockpool Kayaks make sea kayaks using the finest processes and materials available. Our kayaks are hand made in Anglesey, North Wales and are designed to be used in the roughest of conditions that this area often provides.
Our kayaks are made using two different techniques, called the Standard and the Premier. Both of these are of equal strength, but the Premier is lighter than the Standard.
Standard construction
Time proven handmade construction using polyester resin, chopped strand and woven glassfibre.
Premium Construction.
These kayaks are made using vacuum infusion on both deck and hull. Vacuum infusion is a technique that uses vacuum pressure to drive resin into the laminate giving a high resin to fibre ratio and superior laminate properties. This process uses a much stronger epoxy resin combined with a higher strength of carbon and aramid cloth to give a greatly improved strength to weight laminate.
Kayaks made using both manufacturing methods are of similar strength, but the higher quality Premier construction uses less material resulting in the Premier being lighter than the Standard construction.
Colours and Artwork
We are proud of our reputation for colour schemes and graphics, but this comes with some conditions that need to be understood. The more complicated the design then the more the kayak will weigh. Gelcoat is sprayed on the mould for each colour and these coats of gel overlap each other. A full glitter kayak will have a full spray coat of clear gel with glitter mixed in. This is then backed up with another coat of gel with a matching pigment. Combine this, with extra graphics and the weight of gel coat increases.
Some colours (some reds, oranges and yellows for example) have a poor depth of colour, slightly translucent, in other words, you can see through them. The Premier construction uses clear epoxy resin that combined with the black weave of the carbon cloth results in the possibility of seeing faint traces of the weave showing through the gelcoat. This can be fixed by spraying an extra layer of gelcoat but this just adds weight to a kayak that we have done our best to keep light, so we don’t do it. There is an optimal thickness for gelcoat and we make sure that we keep to this.
This is not a problem with the standard construction kayaks as the backing laminate has pigmented resin.
Gelcoat Pigment Options:
All RAL colours and custom colour matching service available except luminous and pearl.
http://www.ralcolor.com/
Glitter Colours:Polyester Jewels
Highest quality glitter, applied by spraygun and backed with contrasting or matching solid gelcoat colour:
Polyester Jewels - Click here to view.
Alpha Jewels
Multicoloured jewels which reflect spectrum colours at various lighting angles, may be mixed in @ 5% or 10% with Polyester Jewels for tinting of solid glitter, or just sprayed lightly to brighten a solid gelcoat boat. Alpha may be sprayed on black for maximum effect!
Please note: Colours may vary due to different monitor calibrations.
At Rockpool we fit our own in-house skeg design. As you would expect, this is an innovative design which uses a skeg cable under tension rather than compression. This means that the if the skeg is inadvertently left down when landing - the skeg slider is drawn back as the skeg is forced back into its housing, rather than causing the cable to kink.
All kayaks are fitted with Rockpool skegs as standard - except the Taran which is fitted with the Smart Track rudder system as standard.
The Tarans have Smart track footrests for use with the rudder, All other kayaks have a full plate footrest.