Quit using wellnuts on your Kayak

The hole you have to drill for wellnuts is enormous. The rubber will eventually rot, and you will have a problem. Obviously using screws and nuts is the best solution but in places where you can't get a wrench on the nut use these rivets in the link below.

http://www.captdick.net/HARDWARE_CLEATS_PADEYES.htm

Those rivets aren't anything new - we used them here for a long time...their drawback is that they leak - so we designed our own screw in fitting system to cut down on the number of leak points along the deck. The holding power of screws is higher as well without the leak issue - so we made the change long ago away from those types of rivets.

If you are interested we still sell them for folks who have the original style deck eyes.

Our part number is 8012001 -bulb type rivet (from any Hobie dealer 1800hobie49)

I never said rivets are new. The rivets in the link above are for marine use. With a little silicone leaks would be a non issue. If you agree with me that well nuts aren't good, then why does Hobie still use them (safety flag kit, AMA kit)?

I don't agree that well nuts are no good...I personally think they are great. Not sure how you mistook that I felt they were bad. (Using well nuts sometimes is the only option since you can't get into the area to fasten a backing washer and nut) - obviously it would be best to through-bolt - but I don't agree that rivets are the answer - they don't have the holding power that screws have - we made several tests for this and have gotten to the point where we are today.....

I know rivets aren't new- I was only saying 'that specific' rivet that you posted was already used in production here for years...but we went away from it in favor of other fasteners that worked better (had more holding power - an more importantly didn't leak) BTW: adding a spot of silicone doesn't work well - we found that the best seal for a rivets was a drop of loctite in our testing strangely enough