crooked2x4
Member
First, this site is great, on the other hand, I think my boat project has taken on a life of it's own.
I was searching for marine grade plywood and stumbled into this site, and have been reading about projects instead of moving forward on mine, I keep telling myself research is good.
My boat is a Starcraft SF-14-L, a 3 bench utility boat, in 1988 after seeing my kids slipping around the edge of the boat while trying to look at fish in the shallows, I decided to put in a floor, in the spring of 1989 I started and finished the project in about 10 days. I used 1 1/2"x1 1/2" X3/16" aluminum angle attached to the floor ribs with 3/4" galvanized hex-head screws, on top of those I laid 1 1/2"x1 1/2"x1/8" square aluminum tubes, these where placed 8" on center. I used 2 1/4" self tapping galvanized screws to attach the square tubing to the angle. I used 5/8" marine grade plywood for the floor attaching it with 1 1/4" stainless steel screws, at the time I remember thinking about oxidation and corrosion, but in the back of my mind I was thinking in 5-10 years I would be rebuilding the floor again. I carpeted the floor with gray outdoor carpet from Fleet Farm "cheap" and glued it down with Henry's adhesive.
About 3 years ago the carpet started to show signs of releasing from the plywood I tacked down an edge here and there until this year when I found a weak spot in the plywood I blame the feral cats that found their way under the cover last winter. While fishing at Woman Lake in Minnesota the weak spot broke though. Of course we kept fishing, but I started expanding the project I had in mind for replacing the carpet.
Well that's how I got to this site, looking for plywood, and general information about redoing the floor in the boat. While I was demo"ing" the floor I took some pictures with my phone. I'm planning to change the framing based on some of the things that I've learned from this site.
I noticed that the galvanized screws that were in contact with the marine grade plywood corroded more than those that were in contact with the aluminum, also in my case the aluminum tubing showed some white areas where the marine plywood and the aluminum touched but this appeared to be something that had leached from the plywood and collected
on the surface of the aluminum.
The demo went fairly easily, I was able to remove most of the screws with my cordless screw gun, a few screwheads were stripped, and a few others just broke off, but a large pipe wrench on the tubing worked wonders.
"The Plan" for now is to get the bottom in and try to be back out fishing in October, I heard that some the lakes in Missouri will be a good place to fish at that time.
Removed the pics that weren't very good
The "Weak Spot"
This is the old framing.
Front end
I was searching for marine grade plywood and stumbled into this site, and have been reading about projects instead of moving forward on mine, I keep telling myself research is good.
My boat is a Starcraft SF-14-L, a 3 bench utility boat, in 1988 after seeing my kids slipping around the edge of the boat while trying to look at fish in the shallows, I decided to put in a floor, in the spring of 1989 I started and finished the project in about 10 days. I used 1 1/2"x1 1/2" X3/16" aluminum angle attached to the floor ribs with 3/4" galvanized hex-head screws, on top of those I laid 1 1/2"x1 1/2"x1/8" square aluminum tubes, these where placed 8" on center. I used 2 1/4" self tapping galvanized screws to attach the square tubing to the angle. I used 5/8" marine grade plywood for the floor attaching it with 1 1/4" stainless steel screws, at the time I remember thinking about oxidation and corrosion, but in the back of my mind I was thinking in 5-10 years I would be rebuilding the floor again. I carpeted the floor with gray outdoor carpet from Fleet Farm "cheap" and glued it down with Henry's adhesive.
About 3 years ago the carpet started to show signs of releasing from the plywood I tacked down an edge here and there until this year when I found a weak spot in the plywood I blame the feral cats that found their way under the cover last winter. While fishing at Woman Lake in Minnesota the weak spot broke though. Of course we kept fishing, but I started expanding the project I had in mind for replacing the carpet.
Well that's how I got to this site, looking for plywood, and general information about redoing the floor in the boat. While I was demo"ing" the floor I took some pictures with my phone. I'm planning to change the framing based on some of the things that I've learned from this site.
I noticed that the galvanized screws that were in contact with the marine grade plywood corroded more than those that were in contact with the aluminum, also in my case the aluminum tubing showed some white areas where the marine plywood and the aluminum touched but this appeared to be something that had leached from the plywood and collected
on the surface of the aluminum.
The demo went fairly easily, I was able to remove most of the screws with my cordless screw gun, a few screwheads were stripped, and a few others just broke off, but a large pipe wrench on the tubing worked wonders.
"The Plan" for now is to get the bottom in and try to be back out fishing in October, I heard that some the lakes in Missouri will be a good place to fish at that time.
Removed the pics that weren't very good
The "Weak Spot"
This is the old framing.
Front end