typed by ben's 2001 Lowe 1648M all aluminum build (UD 6/27)

[Country Dave]

Wow thanks brother,

I'm in the office today for a little bit but I brought her with me. This afternoon I'm going to go run her again. I changed the prop, moved the trolling motor battery a little bit forward and mounted the trolling motor so we'll see what up. Keep up the good work on your build.

 

[typed by ben]

Country Dave » Today, 08:08[/url]"]Wow thanks brother,

I'm in the office today for a little bit but I brought her with me. This afternoon I'm going to go run her again. I changed the prop, moved the trolling motor battery a little bit forward and mounted the trolling motor so we'll see what up. Keep up the good work on your build.

that sounds cool man, cant wait to tune mine in.

short nap for baby this morning = little progress. but we did go get some clamps, and i had to put back together what fell apart last night. this is very close to all the tube ill have to cut for up front.


so ill have hatches in both left corners adjacent to the bench, probably a hatch in the upper right corner, and a foot pedal recess in the center, right hand side (where the blue and red clamps are). cant wait to start buzzing some of this stuff together so i can throw out all the clamps and tape.

 

[Country Dave]

Slow and steady wins the race.

 

[typed by ben]

Country Dave » Today, 12:54[/url]"]Slow and steady wins the race.

yep gotta keep telling myself that. actually i dont want to finish it this winter and then have to wait until april or may to use it for the first time!

im calling the deck done. wrote part IDs at all the joints and wrote them down. that should help with reassembly as i break it all into subassemblies.



im gonna do some tests monday to see what the limits are of this .080 aluminum. id really rather just form the doors and seam the corners but i believe i will have to add some angle or bar in to make them stiff enough. no big deal if i have to, just another step.

after that i gotta start on supports that go from the deck to the stringers. i should be able to get away with 2 sections of support- imagine 2 lateral lines from port to starboard that break the deck into thirds.

last is cutting the sheet for the deck. not looking forward to that.

 

[spagatti]

Looks good. I ended up having drop in storage for most of my bins, but for others just cut the decking material (ply wood) to form a hatch.Good luck with the rest of the build, such a versitle boat you can take them in almost any way.

 

[typed by ben]

man oh man, had hardly any time for the boat these last couple weeks. but they have not been without progress.

cut up my hatch lids and formed them last week, then welded them tonight

they were super flimsy out of the brake which had me worried about the deck material i had selected, but they tightened right up when i welded the corners. that was a nice surprise.

to make formed parts, shooting from the hip is cool and all but ultimately very wasteful. thats why you always have a plan- in this case i needed to maintain a 1.00" lid height so i can add the edge trim and remain flush with my deck. in order to do that we had to do some math to account for the metal stretching as it is bent, thats called the bend deduction. i subtract my bend deduction from my nominal size to get a cut size- form it up and it will fall right where you want.

 

[Mojo]

Good work on those hatch lids! Once again.. I wish I had a welder in my garage. :|

 

[typed by ben]

Mojo » 31 Oct 2013, 20:30[/url]"]Good work on those hatch lids! Once again.. I wish I had a welder in my garage. :|

lol its a blessing and a curse... makes you want to weld everything, especially now that i have a mig and tig

 

[smackdaddy53]

Mojo » 31 Oct 2013, 20:30[/url]"]Good work on those hatch lids! Once again.. I wish I had a welder in my garage. :|

lol its a blessing and a curse... makes you want to weld everything, especially now that i have a mig and tig

That is exactly what Id be doing too!

 

[BayouCajun]

I will be watching your build, I am running into some of the same issues (batteries…and what to do with them)…

Let me share a personal battery experience. I had a battery in a 74' Monte Carlo, with a cracked post explode while my hand was holding a combo wrench over the battery, the explosion blew out a hole in the side of the battery, I was looking over the open hood at the person sitting in the drivers seat…saved my eyes…somewhat…

I thought I had lost my hand…couldn't feel anything, couldn't see anything because my eyes were burning really bad…almost as bad as my chest…

Then the service station owner came out and was freaking out, while I calmly was screaming at him to hose me off with some water :twisted:

and asking if my hand was still there... [-o< …it was…eyes still bother me…this was back in '79.

Batteries are bombs…just like space shuttle tanks….with unreliable timers.

I haven't tied my batteries or my dual bank charger down yet…and similar to you is rod storage, thinking about punching holes in forward bulkhead and insert pvc tubes, but then that interferes with battery box…

an adjustable plan…

Love what you are doing.

 

[smackdaddy53]

Gel cell or AGM Batteries are more expensive but safer and better in the long run.

 

[typed by ben]

BayouCajun » 02 Nov 2013, 15:41[/url]"]I will be watching your build, I am running into some of the same issues (batteries…and what to do with them)…

Let me share a personal battery experience. I had a battery in a 74' Monte Carlo, with a cracked post explode while my hand was holding a combo wrench over the battery, the explosion blew out a hole in the side of the battery, I was looking over the open hood at the person sitting in the drivers seat…saved my eyes…somewhat…

I thought I had lost my hand…couldn't feel anything, couldn't see anything because my eyes were burning really bad…almost as bad as my chest…

Then the service station owner came out and was freaking out, while I calmly was screaming at him to hose me off with some water :twisted:

and asking if my hand was still there... [-o< …it was…eyes still bother me…this was back in '79.

Batteries are bombs…just like space shuttle tanks….with unreliable timers.

I haven't tied my batteries or my dual bank charger down yet…and similar to you is rod storage, thinking about punching holes in forward bulkhead and insert pvc tubes, but then that interferes with battery box…

an adjustable plan…

Love what you are doing.

thanks for the nice words for the anecdote... i work in automation where safety is king, and i have learned not to scoff at it like i might have 10 years ago, before i started.

my batteries are going to go into boxes and the boxes will be attached to a bulkhead of some sort, probably just another sheet of aluminum. i will probably bump that up to 5052 from my current 3003 as its better to drill and tap

 

[typed by ben]

just to prove that i HAVE been working... just at more of a geologic pace.

 

[Mojo]

Ben,

It's not a race buddy, Your doing a great job.. I'm sure all that welding takes more time than the ole pop rivet gun method I'm using.

Mojo

 

[typed by ben]

i know its not- just these weekends that my wife works are really the only ones i get to put my nose to the grindstone. even then theres still balance between keeping the house up, watching the baby, that sort of thing.

i expect to have some pretty good progress tomorrow. ive got some more complicated welds clamped on the table that i expect to knock out in the morning.

 

[typed by ben]

as promised:

starboard deck subassembly


checking clearance for the hatch

feeling very upbeat and positive- no more blue tape, lots of clamps going back into the toolbox, fewer and fewer pieces of metal laying about!

 

[Mojo]

Looking Good Man, Those hatch lids turned out nice!

 

[Flatbotm]

Its looking good Ben. Your finished product should look very nice!

 

[typed by ben]

well well well! this is not trick photography- no clamps or tape were used in the production of these photographs!

starboard subassembly looking right at home

the whole thing- some welds are just two sided seams as i ran out of time.

BUT ITS STILL THE WHOLE THING! =D> =D> never thought id get here.

funny thing: i actually went back behind myself and rewelded some of these sections. amazing how handy ive be come with a tig torch. this is probably the hardest material to learn to tig, and it was a baptism of fire. but im very happy with the result.

 

[typed by ben]

couple more things done tonight... finished seaming up the deck. i think ill do two more tie bars between the two sub assemblies just to make it nice and rigid. wont hurt at this point in the game.

today i sheared some material to make my foot pedal recess box. this is .080 3003 alloy, just like the lids.

the bottom sat on my welding table. one of the sides was then set on top of that material and clamped to a piece of angle. that set my height- which makes it much easier to get a proper chamfer when you go to seam your tray


the corners had to be chamfered a little bit as well to make room for tacks:


after you get your first piece in place tack it in the corners and move piece by piece, and hopefully it all meets up like this:


seam it up, polish your welds flat if you need to maintain fit like i did:

voila, foot pedal recess- (truthfully not 100% complete, this one will have a 1" flange around the top to make it a drop in that sits on top of the deck)