SoFlaBassAddict
Member
So, I've been lurking around on here for a while browsing around. What an incredible wealth of knowledge one can find here. To start things off, I've been looking for a small boat to use on my lake (private community) for a while now. I finally found something that fit the bill. An old 1963 Duratech 1236. My father and I looked at it and basically said thats the boat we've been looking for. Obviously I wanted to find something that was wider and basically done and finished, but that wasn't happening. There were a ton of boats down here but 95% of them were either pure junk, or 30/32 inch bottoms. He's done a lot of metal work in his history. So we had no issues popping some rivets off to remove some junk alum on the bow. Popping out small dents and dings was no issue either. I've been bothering him for years to get rid of some of his old metal working tools, guess it's a good thing he's a packrat. Now we're down to just a hull. Three or four slowly leaking rivets. No big deal. Some 5200 sealant should handle that. If not a few new rivets is an easy thing to do. I cut out the wood for the flooring. Tell him to let me get my good jigsaw from my shop. He cuts out the spaces for the ribs anyway with his jigsaw that was made sometime in the late 50's/60's. Needless to say the cuts weren't the best. But he's happy and it works. So fine. Lets just say that I own a carpentry shop, I had no problem doing it, he's a stubborn old man. :lol:
Tomorrow, my daughters and I are going over to my shop to cut and attach the carpeting to the floorboards. I know I shouldn't do a full deck on a 36" bottom. I'm not. Two six year olds and a tipsy boat are a recipe for disaster. Just the floors a small platform at the bow for storage and a trolling motor mount. I may box in a small area at the transom as well to cover the battery and have some rear storage. I'm planning on having everything easily removable if I need to clean the boat for some reason as well as eventually strip and repaint the hull. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up before I really start mangling the boat up. (end long post)
(or not)
I've gotta say, it's been a while since I've had a project outside of work that I've really enjoyed working on. Great time to spend with my old man. Plus my daughters get to help as well. Pretty cool stuff. (ok..really the end)
Tomorrow, my daughters and I are going over to my shop to cut and attach the carpeting to the floorboards. I know I shouldn't do a full deck on a 36" bottom. I'm not. Two six year olds and a tipsy boat are a recipe for disaster. Just the floors a small platform at the bow for storage and a trolling motor mount. I may box in a small area at the transom as well to cover the battery and have some rear storage. I'm planning on having everything easily removable if I need to clean the boat for some reason as well as eventually strip and repaint the hull. Hopefully I'll get some pictures up before I really start mangling the boat up. (end long post)
(or not)
I've gotta say, it's been a while since I've had a project outside of work that I've really enjoyed working on. Great time to spend with my old man. Plus my daughters get to help as well. Pretty cool stuff. (ok..really the end)