breachless
Well-known member
Well, after being completely and utterly impressed with the many many fantastic mods here, I finally managed to pick my jaw up off the floor long enough to begin the planning phases of doing one of these myself. I have no idea how it will turn out, and I am almost certain it won't look nearly as good as many of the boats found here (even though I plan on shamelessly copying every good idea I see...)
So here we go, here she is: a 1952 Alumacraft Shallow V. My Great Grandfather supposedly purchased this boat brand new back in 1952 to use as a life-boat for his fishing vessel. He eventually gave it to my grandfather, who used and abused it for quite a few years before giving it to my dad, who also used and abused it for many years (with a TON of help from me as a kid growing up). Some time when I was a kid the original outboard was stolen, so my dad put this mid to late 80's Johnson 15 hp on it brand new at the time. I can say that as a kid, I spent more time with my feet planted in the bottom of this boat than dry land (grew up on a lake) so the boat holds a ton of personal value to me (plus I share my first and last name with all of the people who owned it before me!) I am very excited to modernize it a bit and make it a little bit better suited for stalking the bass in the shallows.
Physically, it's got plenty of dings and dents, but it doesn't leak, which is pretty amazing. My primary focus on this project is to build a deck up front and find a way to mount a bow-mounted trolling motor I can run with my feet. To be honest, just doing this would be enough to make me happy, but the dry storage underneath would be nice too. Weight is a concern as well. I want to try to frame the whole thing with Aluminum, and then put the wood deck down on top of it and carpet it, but weight is secondary to function. In addition to the deck, I am kind of on the fence about whether or not to remove the middle bench: this will be determined when I figure out how I want to do the floor. In another thread I saw Baitcaster put some rubber pieces down on his floor, and I thought that was great. If I do that though, the bench has to stay though so that if I bring a third person fishing they have somewhere to sit (I don't know how I would install a 3rd pedestal seat on the floor in the middle without adding an actual floor with which to mount said seat...) Anyone have any suggestions as far as the flooring goes?
Of course, any suggestions are more than welcome: this whole process is VERY scary for me (and exciting of course). This will probably be a LOOOONG project: as a new dad, my time is kind of limited...
Anyway, here are some pics:
So here we go, here she is: a 1952 Alumacraft Shallow V. My Great Grandfather supposedly purchased this boat brand new back in 1952 to use as a life-boat for his fishing vessel. He eventually gave it to my grandfather, who used and abused it for quite a few years before giving it to my dad, who also used and abused it for many years (with a TON of help from me as a kid growing up). Some time when I was a kid the original outboard was stolen, so my dad put this mid to late 80's Johnson 15 hp on it brand new at the time. I can say that as a kid, I spent more time with my feet planted in the bottom of this boat than dry land (grew up on a lake) so the boat holds a ton of personal value to me (plus I share my first and last name with all of the people who owned it before me!) I am very excited to modernize it a bit and make it a little bit better suited for stalking the bass in the shallows.
Physically, it's got plenty of dings and dents, but it doesn't leak, which is pretty amazing. My primary focus on this project is to build a deck up front and find a way to mount a bow-mounted trolling motor I can run with my feet. To be honest, just doing this would be enough to make me happy, but the dry storage underneath would be nice too. Weight is a concern as well. I want to try to frame the whole thing with Aluminum, and then put the wood deck down on top of it and carpet it, but weight is secondary to function. In addition to the deck, I am kind of on the fence about whether or not to remove the middle bench: this will be determined when I figure out how I want to do the floor. In another thread I saw Baitcaster put some rubber pieces down on his floor, and I thought that was great. If I do that though, the bench has to stay though so that if I bring a third person fishing they have somewhere to sit (I don't know how I would install a 3rd pedestal seat on the floor in the middle without adding an actual floor with which to mount said seat...) Anyone have any suggestions as far as the flooring goes?
Of course, any suggestions are more than welcome: this whole process is VERY scary for me (and exciting of course). This will probably be a LOOOONG project: as a new dad, my time is kind of limited...
Anyway, here are some pics:
