Finishing touches…almost.

I’m sure I missed some stuff in between but what can ya do?  Last time I showed you all of the parts disassembled from the boat.  It was also sitting on the old crappy trailer.  It has come a long way since then.  I’m getting really good at disassembling and reassembling all of these parts.  I decided to drill out the rivets on the bracket that holds the front seat down.  It makes it so much easier to install.  Since that front part isn’t meant to be wood all the way to the bow its really hard to jamb it in there without damaging it.  Now I can remove those brackets on the seat and set the platform in place then reinstall the brackets.  When I reinstall them I just add a rubber washer around the screw and so far no water leaks.  The seats go in much easier.  I can just slide them under the brackets.   I also put a little angle bracket on the floor to hold it down.  Now it wont bounce around when I’m driving down the road or on the lake.

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I also got a chance to add a lock to my front storage cabinet.    I decided to do it after the fact so I had to router out the wood I put there in the first place.  It was kind of fun.  I built a little jig to make sure I colored inside the lines 🙂  Cutting the slot for the lock to go into was no easy task, but with some patience I got it.  As you can see in the picture, I had to pry the cabinet open before I installed the lock and handle.  I caused a lot of damage I’m not happy about.  Live and learn I guess  I’m hoping to get a lock installed for the middle cabinet so I can lock up my valuables.

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For my birthday my mom was nice enough to buy me a couple pedestals for my boat seats.  They sure are much nicer then sitting on that hard wood seat!  I decided to reinforce the wood a bit.  I thru bolted the seat down and glued a second piece of wood on the bench.  Now I’m not so worried about the bench wood splitting.  Especially at the front where it actually sits on a pedestal.

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My Grandpa pretty much gave me a bow mounted trolling motor.  I tried to pay him what it was worth but he would have none of it!  Thanks Gramps!  I build a little section on the bow platform to mount my motor to and store my battery under.  I have big plans for that, but not yet.  I haven’t gotten around to cutting the wood to fully enclose the front, but I will.  The more storage the better!

Next was a milestone for me.  I got to take it off the old crappy trailer and put it on the less old, less crappy trailer.  It wasn’t very hard.  With a little help from my lovely wife, we got it cranked right on the new trailer.  The boat fits so much better on this trailer then the other one.

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I’m by no means done with the boat, but it’s really close!

Transom install

I put this part off for a long time because I was scared of it.  My biggest concern was how to get the holes that were already drilled into the aluminum to line up through the new transom wood.  I didn’t want to end up drilling a bunch of extra holes in the transom metal.

One night I had a great idea.  I put a long drill bit through the two holes so that it was in line and then on the outside of the aluminum drilled through a block of wood.  That way I could use the wood block as a guide and the bit would be lined up at the correct angle.  Just make sure to label each hole and wood block, or all your efforts will be wasted.  Freakin genius!

The rest was easy.  I added a couple stainless eye-bolts to use as a tiedown and then capped it with my newly repaired transome cap.  When drilling the wood to put the rivets in for the cap I sealed it with 3m 5200 marine adhesive sealant just to be safe.  It was exciting to get that part done.  Feels like I really got something important accomplished.  Now if I just had a working motor to hang on it.

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Finishing the Wood

FINALLY! All the wood has been cut and fit (some more than once!)  Now it’s time for some color and to seal it.  I thought a lot about the wood and what I should do, stain it, don’t stain it?  Finally I decided to stain it, I figured if I didn’t I’d regret it later.  I know, a weird choice since I do plan on carpeting the boat later.  I did decide to only stain the seats since I know for sure the floor will get carpet.  It took a looong time to stain the wood and seal it.  I know that poly might not have been the most appropriate choice but it’s cost effective and I know that the wood will outlast my design.  Knowing me I’ll tear it apart and do something new next year!

The red ended up being a nice choice I think.  It has some interesting color variations.  I think it will look great when the boat gets painted.

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Casting Deck install

I’m terrible at catching up on this blog.  As it turns out working on the boat and using the boat is more fun than writing about it.  Oh well.  Working on the front was extremely frustrating.  While taking the aluminium cap off  I broke the bow casting.  Getting the screws out of that bow casting was the hardest part of taking the front off.  After that I screwed out a few rivets and it came right off.

Figuring out the level the deck would be at wasn’t the easiest.  Simple 2×4 frame was the best I could think of.  A couple little legs down to the support rips seems to work fairly well.  The template for the front was just about the end of me.  I stuggled to get it but with my wonderful wife’s help we got one made!  I goofed a few times during the cutting of the wood but it will all be hidden with the carpet so no big deal.  I also wanted to add a door to use the front part as storage.  That part was easy, after cutting the cabinet doors in the seat I had no problems getting this one cut.

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Seat Modifications

A while ago I marked out where I wanted to cut the seat tops to make cabinets.  I never got around to doing it until now.  I measured out where I wanted the cabinet doors and drew some lines.  I took so long to actually make the cuts because I wasn’t sure how to do it.  After a lot of thinking and talking to my step dad I decided to do a plunge cut with my new circular saw (thanksEric!)  It was a lot easier than I thought.  I ended up with some nice little cabinet doors.  Menards only sells a few lengths of hinges so I had to cut some down.  Right now its just regular steel, the stainless was waaaay too much.  That will happen next summer.  I’m writing this post months after I did this work, and I still haven’t figured out how to support the smaller door in the photos.  There is a plastic bucket that fits right inside, but I dont know how to stop the door from swinging all the way back in.  I’m working on it!

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Body Work

I took a break and only worked a little here and there.  There is a metal bracket that gets screwed to the transom to hold up a piece of wood that comes back from the seat.  Lots of boat have them.  Mine was trashed.  I took a scrap piece of wood that was the proper size and started screwing it down.  I clamped and then screwed one side down first then slowly and carefully pounded the dents out.  Working my way down the metal, clamping and screwing as I went.  Eventually I got it back in to shape (well, mostly).

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Construction Continues March 31, 2009

Holy.  Don’t look at the date on the last post and compare it to this one.  Its almost embarrassing.  I have been working on Rex off and on since the last post.  I didn’t get too much done at a time so it never felt worth while to post any photos.  All that work added up then I made a big push to get it in the water by memorial day.  So strap in, this could be a while!

After getting that first floor cut I had a pretty good idea of how to do the middle section.  I had already cut and fit the brackets on to the seat so all I had to do was fasten to the seat walls.

This section was a little bit trickier shape so I had to make a template.  Cut one piece of cardboard to fit and then another.  Overlap them and draw a line to cut to fit together to make one piece.  Now all I had to do was transfer over to a piece of wood and cut that out.  That was really easy.  just a couple straight line cuts and the floor is ready to go.  I did cut the two sides on the floor at a 45 to fit the sidewall of the boat a little better.  For now I left it just as the floor board.  Eventually I will glue that and the stringers together but I wanted to make sure I could adjust as necessary.  Well thats all for now.  More to come soon, really soon!

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Construction Begins!

Well, I finally got around to putting some time into my boat.  I spent all last week after work (when I didn’t have other stuff going on) working on Rex.  Just about every night I was up until 12 or 1 working on it.  I also spent a good amount of time this weekend getting stuff done.  I would have liked to spend more time, but we volunteered sandbagging.  That was fun in a way, and I’m glad to help out those folks.  I’m hoping to get back out and volunteer this week too.  Get some snacks and strap in for a long one, we got a lot to cover.

I changed my plans from the original (actually about 800 times).  I decided not to take the seats all the way out because I didn’t want to put the time and money into making that work.  So now I’m making new seats, adding a floor in the middle two sections and a floor that’s a little higher up in the bow of the boat.  I’m also going to close off that front portion with a cabinet to store crap but mainly to have my battery in a safe place.  I’m also going to make a little cabinet in the back seat and a full seat cabinet in the middle seat.  I’m only doing those two cabinets if I can fit some foam under the seats to make up for the stuff I’m taking out.  I think I will be able to.

So first off, I posted on Freecycle for someone to do an aluminum weld to fix my transom that was cracked.  After a while someone responded and welded it for me.  He did a great job in the sense that it is welded together but there was a big blob on the back side of the transom cap.  I had to take a grinder to it.  I shouldn’t complain too much because it was free!  The cap still isn’t pretty but it’s one piece now.

Next I started cutting my stringers.  I know its probably not the best way to do this but since I’m trying to do it on the cheap and not waste a lot of material I decided to cut down some spare plywood that I have laying around.  I cut them into two inch strips and decided to laminate them together.  I know that they would maybe be a bit stronger if I flipped them on their side, but I like the idea of screwing them to the deck and being able to screw in the face of the wood instead of between the plys.  I originally thought I would do three strips laminated together so I decided to start glueing them together.  After doing some research I decided to use a polyurethane glue.  I don’t have a photo of what it is but you can buy it at most big box stores.  So after I got these clamped up I decided to lay out the stringers on my saw horses and space them the way they would be in the boat.  After I got them duct taped together for a temporary lamination and the floor sheet on I hopped up and stood on it.  It was a lot more solid that I thought.  When I started to tare the mock-up down I realized that I had only taped two layers together.  Well, I was sold, it was strong enough with two layers.  I guess it’s nice to save a little (very little) weight.

I got to thinking about how I was going to fit the floor in and measure out where my stringers and ledge need to sit and I thought, “Why not use a smaller piece of wood?” So I cut a 6″ strip of wood to be the width I wanted and placed where I wanted.  I got every thing measured up and figured out where the aluminum ledge needed to sit.  So now, on to the aluminum ledge!  I decided to try something out.  I cut 1 X 1 X  1/8 aluminum angle into 3 inch strips.  Then drilled some holes to get it ready to rivet to the side of the seat.  I made a little template to set on the aluminum angle so that I didn’t have to measure out the the holes on each one.  I just took a piece of duct tape and after I measured one out and drilled the holes I just copied that over to the duct tape and then copied that to all the pieces.  I was nervous that all this stuff was not going to work but decided to take a chance.   Here is everything cut, drilled and laid out ready to go.  I started to test fit all the angles in.  Since I wanted to keep my floor somewhat low in the boat I had to grind out some of the pieces to fit properly.  After I got all the pieces ground out to fit and the holes drilled in the side of the seat it was time to rivet them in to place.  After I struggled with the rivet gun for a while, I finally got it to work.  Here is the first ledger put in.  After some more struggling and banged up knuckles I got the first side done.  All 4 of them!  After I got the one side in I set in the fancy duct taped stringers to fit it up.  Then started to level them and straighten them with some shims and a s framing square.  I did that so I knew where to sit the other side ledger on the sidewall of the seat.  Before I did that I had to level the boat on the trailer.  That was a pain.  After some more work and a lot more measuring I got the other side of ledgers installed in place.  Finally I get to set my floor that I cut like three days before in place.  I have to decide exactly how I want to cut the floor to fit.  I think that in the end I  should just leave it as is because it will be just fine, but I have a problem letting some things go.  I spent some more time fitting the other seats I cut earlier in the week.  I got all three in and called it a night.  I had to go do some flood fighting anyways.  Damn river!

Here are a few of what I have done so far.

One of my next projects is to make a motor stand for this bad boy so that I can work on it.  One of the guys I used to work with is willing to help me change the fuel filter and clean out the carb.  That will be an experience.  I know NOTHING about small gas engines.  Luckily he does.

Well, that is it for now.  Hopefully soon I can get back to working on it, but with all this rain and snow, I’m more worried about the river knocking on my door than the boat so we’ll see how much I get done before next weekend.  Its supposed to crest on Saturday I think, so hopefully I won’t have to worry after that.  If you are in the Fargo/Moorhead area go out and sandbag.  It’s not that hard of work and it will really help a lot of people out.  Besides, its good Karma.  Sorry about the picture placement, wordpress is just not cooperating with me.

Transom Demolition!

Today I stated working on my boat again.  I didn’t really mean too, it just kind of happen.  I used an 1/8″ drill bit and drill out all of the rivets on the transom cap.  Thanks to the folks on Iboat.com for the help on that.  I just went slow and had no problems.  After I got the cap off I could see that it didn’t look good.  It wasn’t as soft as it looks but it was bad.  I’m glad I decided to try to do this, I think it will be well workth it.  Unfortunailtly the cap has seen better days.  I will have to try to get it fixed or make some kind of replacement, but that will come later.

Once I got the cap off I tried to take the wood out.   I took two of those hooks you use to hang your bike from the ceiling in the garage.  I figured the wood was bad enough it would just pull right out but I thought I would give it a try.  I pulled and pulled but I couldn’t get the stupid think out.  I looked around a little bit and found a couple rivets that were drilled out but still not out of the way and I found one bold that had no head or nut but was still connected to the aluminum in the transom.  Once I pounded that out I pulled one more time and it came right out.

I originally thought I had to take out a ton of rivets but I didn’t realize that the wood didn’t go all the way down.  I’m not sure why I thought that.  I tested one rivet and realized that I only went through one thin layer I took another look and saw I was an idiot.  Glad I didn’t have to drill out all of the rivets, it would have taken forever.

I spend the next half hour or so trying to clean out the inside of that tiny little space.  It was gross.  Sand, bugs, wood hunks, and some cacoons.  It was really hard to get it clean, I basically used a rag wrapped around a stick and scrubbed…hard.  Now I can cut some more wood and make a new transom.  I just need to figure out what kind of wood to use.

The trailer

This weekend I started working on the trailer a little bit.  I’m not sure if I am going to keep this trailer or not.  I think it is a little small for the boat.  The transom sits about 8 to 12 inches beyond the roller.  I figure it works ok for now but I might have to do a little adjustment later or buy a different trailer.  I mostly just wanted something to put the boat on while I work on it and I got this trailer for 25 bucks.  This photo shows how the boat sits on the trailer.  As you can see it hangs off the back.  I can’t move the winch any farther forward because its at the very front.  I was thinking maybe I can get a piece of steel and extend the trailer my self but I’m not sure if that is a good idea or not.

 

I do know that reguardless of if I keep the trailer or not I’m planning on fixing it up a bit.  Painting it and adding lights.  I think that I can get a lot more money out of it that way.  I also decided to replace the winch.  It had a really old rusty cable and a bent gear on it so I bought one at menards for $20, not a bad deal.  Here are a couple photos of the before and after.  The new one doesnt line up right so I have to do a bit of adjustment but its on right now.  Its nice to know that I dont have to worry nearly as much about the winch breaking when I use it with the new one on!

I didn’t get as much planned out as I wanted this weekend, but I have some time.  I’m not planning on doing much until after christmas.