Finally getting a new (to me) tin boat, a 1436

[Hydrilla]

Thanks guys, glad to hear I'm not the only one I finished the front deck tonight. It is solid as stone, and everything is on the same plane, with no twist to it whatsoever. I'm sure there are better designs, but for my first effort I'm pretty proud of it. It really is solid as stone, and you can't get it to move at all. Here are a few pics.

I'm also attaching a pic of a gas tank I picked up. Kind of funny because I don't even have an outboard yet. My dilemma is that I don't have enough room for a 6 gallon because of the transom support being in the way. I found this 3.2 gallon at Gander Mountain, and it fits perfectly. Figured I would go ahead and pick it up in case I decide to deck the back end of the boat.

Tomorrow night I'm going to take tons of measurements and work on cutting out my front deck wood. One thing I need to do is figure out if I can live with a slight gap at the rear of the front deck, and if not, how do I deal with it. The center bench where the deck will start, up to half a foot or so forward of the bench, is wider than my plywood by about an inch at the most, and gradually getting less wide of course. Would this gap bother you guys?

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

Lookin' great man! =D> Wonderd if you might be able to give me the length, width, height, and bolt spacing of the seat base you have. Would like to use the same ones you have, but would like to be able to lay out the framing before hand.

 

[Hydrilla]

Yeah man, no prob- I'll do that when I get home tonight. It's the standard Attwood one that Walmart sells.

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

Thanks man. You don't know what you paid for them do you? I didn't look at walmart yet, but flipped through the BPS catalog and I thenk they were like $20 for the springfield ones.

 

[Hydrilla]

I can't remember but it was less than that I think.

 

[Hydrilla]

By not building this frame so the deck rests on the middle bench as well as the front ledge, I think I've created a problem for myself. Instead of the deck frame being just support, without the deck going up on the front ledge, the frame in this case becomes much more 'load bearing' the way I see it. I'm wondering if a solution would be to include some sort of brackets that might help transfer some of that load bearing to the front ledge. Your thoughts on this would be appreciated. Here's kind of what I was thinking about, except not just in that one place obviously.

 

[danmyersmn]

By not building this frame so the deck rests on the middle bench as well as the front ledge, I think I've created a problem for myself. Instead of the deck frame being just support, without the deck going up on the front ledge, the frame in this case becomes much more 'load bearing' the way I see it. I'm wondering if a solution would be to include some sort of brackets that might help transfer some of that load bearing to the front ledge. Your thoughts on this would be appreciated. Here's kind of what I was thinking about, except not just in that one place obviously.

Take two pieces of angle and rivet them together with the backs together so that they form a T Then you can use the right side of the T and rivet it to the bottom of the front seat. The left side of the T would support the front of the decking. It looks like the level lines up for a perfect fit like that?

 

[Hydrilla]

Yessir, everything hits the same point on the bottom of the ledge, within probably 1/16". I think I can picture what you are saying. I'll have to make a drawing after lunch, makes it easier for me to visualize.

 

[Nick Jones]

It looks great man! I must warn you to put it in the water with some kind of temporary deck on it before permanently attaching it. I did one this way and it was too high for my 36 inch bottom.

 

[Cheeseball]

ne thing I need to do is figure out if I can live with a slight gap at the rear of the front deck, and if not, how do I deal with it. The center bench where the deck will start, up to half a foot or so forward of the bench, is wider than my plywood by about an inch at the most, and gradually getting less wide of course. Would this gap bother you guys?

I must say that would bother me. Maybe you could shim the gaps with i piece of pine or some other material you could shape to fit the gap.

 

[Hydrilla]

Yeah, I was thinking about some sort of shim. I build mandolins so I have a good bit of scrap wood and stuff.

I got the front lip support thing built last night, problem solved. It's a very sturdy support, gives me a lot more peace of mind.

CRAPPIE_SLAYER, the packaging on my seat base says 7" x 7" but I measured it anyway, and it's just barely shy of 6 7/8" x 6 7/8". I tried to measure the hole you need for the bottom, but it's kind of hard to do since it has small flares around the hole underneath. Hopefully this picture will help what I said make sense.

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

Thanks man!

 

[Hydrilla]

Rivet info- I had this question before I did my riveting, so maybe someone else might be wondering the same thing. If you buy rivets from Lowes, the 3/16" aluminum rivets, long size is what I used and they worked out well. The medium length may have worked but I can't see a downside to the long ones. Connecting 2 pieces of 1/8" angle aluminum was no problem, and I'm sure it would do 3 if you needed it to. Oh, and pay the extra $5 for the rivet gun that rotates 360 degrees, it's worth it.

 

[Nick Jones]

ok! i need to see some progress on this boat! lol :lol:

 

[Hydrilla]

Hopefully cutting/fitting plywood tonight 8) I was going to last night but my son called from Army AIT training so talking to him bumped the boat down in the priority list

 

[Hydrilla]

I got my front deck measured and cut out last night, and it couldn't have gone better. I spent a lot of time measuring the width of the boat every 3", and was real careful about measuring the centerline of the plywood and trying to be accurate as possible with the width measurements, and it really paid off. After doing a little trimming to account for the ribs, I measured and cut the hole for my seat base, based on the location of my center frame supports. I then coated the edge of the plywood all the way around with liquid nails, before running out of time for the evening.

The gap on the sides toward the rear is because the plywood is 48" wide and the boat at that point is almost 50' wide.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I climbed up on the deck (carefully because I know when it's on the trailer, it's not good to put a bunch of weight on the boat) and found that the whole piece of plywood sets evenly on the framing, and everything is very sturdy, even all the way up front. I think adding that lip up front was a great decision for me.

 

[danmyersmn]

all sorts of room for casting with that deck!

 

[CRAPPIE_SLAYER]

Nice work!

 

[Hydrilla]

Thanks guys!

The registration process just took a hilarious turn, turns out I had the paperwork I needed all along. The guy I bought the boat from is friends with the last registered owner. My seller never registered the boat in his name, and he gave me the correct notarized form saying that he was not the last registered owner but so-and-so is. Based on the boat numbers, what had me so spun up a couple weeks ago was that the wildlife commision was telling me that so-and-so was NOT the last registered owner, and I had to contact the guy who did register it last, blah blah blah. Turns out that so-and-so IS the last registered owner, and a single digit in the registration number was transposed incorrectly by somebody who must have inhaled too many spray bomb fumes :roll: :mrgreen:

All this over nothing. Since the boat was never titled and wasn't required to be titled, I have everything I need to get it registered. Go figure.

 

[Hydrilla]

Fitting the floor for the middle section of the boat was one of the easiest things I've done so far, mostly because the dimensions were virtually square. It was still a little time consuming because of the cutouts for the ribs which I didn't pre-cut, and had to cut each side several times until everything fit. I'll do the liquid nails tonight, one side with Thompsons tomorrow night, etc.

Since both sides of my front deck will be done tomorrow, I may even start on carpet for it tomorrow. I debated how I was going to do the hole for the seat base- should I just razor knife the carpet at the edge of the hole, or just make an "X" cut and fold the flaps down into the hole. Since I cut the hole slightly big, I'm going to go with the X cut. Not sure if cutting it flush at the hole could cause the carpet to fray around the edges and eventually creep out from under the seat base, but I don't want to take that chance.