1648 alumacraft build by hardwoodcd

[hardwoodcd]

Hello all! I've been looking around this site for some time now and I've started my build which is going to be fairly involved. A little background on what had happened to get me to this point. My family owns an access lot at a local (30 minute drive) lake. We can have 2 boats but the secondary boat has to be 10hp or less. I wanted a bass boat and my wife wanted a pontoon. We thought we were making a good compromise buying a 17' deep v. As it turns out neither of us were very happy! Well I inherited my old man's 16' river runner when he passed away a couple years ago and decided to build my fishing rig out of it for the lake (only 400 acre) and power it with a 9.9 merc. I wasn't in a hurry until a tree in our yard fell right on our current boat! So this is an opportunity to finish my dad's (I always called him pop!) boat and then we'll get a pontoon for our family of 4. I started this when I first got the boat and don't have those pics readily available so I'll start with pics after the demo was done. So I pulled out the three bench seats and all the foam and had just a shell with ribs when these pics start. Additionally I have never worked with metal before! I'm very proficient with wood and can do just about anything with it, hence the screen name! Get your mind out of the gutter! Can't wait to hear your opinions and suggestions! On to some pics!

 

[hardwoodcd]

I'll try and get to posting some pics tonight!

 

[hardwoodcd]

Here are a few pics of the wind storm we had that fateful day!!!! Even though this wasn't the bass boat that I originally wanted, I grew to love this boat!! Nothing special, but nothing wrong with her either! everything worked as it should. It was a 1998 Smokercraft 170 with a 75hp Mercury on the back.

 

[hardwoodcd]

The day I brought the old man's boat home. After it had been sitting down by the river for two years with a tarp thrown over it. Let the project begin

 

[hardwoodcd]

All cleaned up! Figured out how to drill out the rivets that held the three benches in place. At this point I needed to figure out how to fix a bunch of holes!

 

[hardwoodcd]

Pictures of all the years of grime from sitting in a dirty river for years! I used a twisted metal brush on a grinder to start cleaning it up

 

[hardwoodcd]

I have the boat pulled to my shop now. After some research on the Internet I figured out how to fill those holes in!

 

[hardwoodcd]

Also all these pics are the ones that I thought I had lost. Got them off the old phone

 

[hardwoodcd]

No pics of this but the bunk boards on the trailer were pretty rotten. So I little new wood and carpet and that is taken care of!

 

[hardwoodcd]

First water test! And having called it the first, it's pretty obvious that it failed. But NONE of my repairs leaked! It was a stock weld that was leaking. This being out of my skill set I took it to a buddy to be fixed! I tried to load up a short video of the leak but apparently I'm not smart enough to do that! Anyway, I'll continue this phase of the boat with another post and pics

 

[derekdiruz]

Lookin good. Keep up with it man! I just got my boat back from a welder, but the beauty of aluminum is that something very small usually can be brazed with simple tools. Good job with the repairs

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[hardwoodcd]

Ok, so I got the boat back from my buddy and immediately did another water test. I filled the boat up past the water as I did when I found the first leak, and guess what? No leaks! So I decided I'll just let the water in overnight just to be sure. So I'm guessing within a half hour of me leaving my shop the buckets I had the boat sitting on gave out! So I'm not sure how much water I had in the boat, but it was more than 6 buckets and 2 jack stands could hold! So I get the boat back up on maybe 10-12 buckets this time to do another test after the fall, and it leaks at the what I assume is the point of impact from the fall!!!! I won't go into great detail here but it took me another 3 water tests before I had all the rivets replaced that were leaking!

 

[hardwoodcd]

Not sure why those bucket pics aren't rotated the right way. Anyway, at this point the boat ended up sitting for almost a year until we get to the first post in this thread and the tree feel on my deep v. The pics from here on out well be more current, within the last month or so. Hopefully I'll have this thread caught up to current day soon!

 

[hardwoodcd]

So having a woodworking background it's hard for me to believe that this little pile of material was a tad over $800! And I've actually bought an additional $300 worth as I'm going!

 

[user 21876]

Aluminum last, but it is anything but cheap

 

[dearl]

What thickness is that plate, tubing and angle?

 

[hardwoodcd]

What thickness is that plate, tubing and angle?

The angle and tube is 1/8" thick and 1 1/2" square
The sheet material is 1/16" for under the front casting in the hatches and 1/8" thick for the small area on the floor that will see traffic. The decks will be wood, either 1/2" or 3/4".

 

[hardwoodcd]

In a lot of the builds I've looked at it seemed to me that people would measure down from their rail and build the deck at that point. It seemed to me that makes for a slightly curved casting desk. So I took some measurements and ran a couple string lines from front to back on both sides and everything got installed off of these lines. My hope is that this will make for a consistent level deck from front to back when I'm finished.

 

[hardwoodcd]

Here is the start to my framing. I have 3 main tubes going across the boat for the front casting deck. There will be two "divider" walls laid into 1/2" channel that will give the tubes their vertical support. Then I plan to run the rest of the framing off of the main 3 tubes.

 

[hardwoodcd]

start of my floor going in