Fixing up my first aluminum, a 14ft Jon Boat

Picked this old girl up a couple days ago. its a 1432 Jon with walls tapered out to a 44" beam. Came pretty barebones, just the boat, a junky trailer and a pretty nice 1995 15hp Johnson.



I'll be using this boat mostly for night time catfishing on the Susquehanna, with the occasional crappie/sunfish trip to local electric-only reservoirs. This is my first aluminum boat. Previously using a 12ft coleman plastic pond boat with a 4.5hp Merc, but that wasn't quite cutting it. I'll probably upsize again in a couple years, but this should be a fun little project for the experience.

Planning on doing:
Low decking with added foam
Create storage under front bench seat
Wire up / switches for lights, bilge pump, gps
Convert trolling motor to bow mount / extend cord
Tune up motor
Possible live well and/or creating storage in rear bench seat

Today a buddy and I tackled the foam, decking, opening up the front bench seat and converting the TM.





Got the seat opened and de-foamed. It had a 10x12x30 block of foam inside. I used the formula in the sticked foam thread and came up with a full sheet of 48x96x2 pink foam would be enough to be on the safe side of flotation.







Ended up using about 80% of the sheet. I'll probably have to leave the rear seat full of foam to continue being safe about swamping. Got the TM flipped around and mounted up front, super easy job.





Glued the foam down, screwed the decking to the ribs. Decking was drenched in Thompsons water sealer and sun baked. Put a quick coat of rattle can camo on as well. It'll be left to fully dry for a couple days.



Starting to plan out my electrical wiring. Going to need to order a battery box and a bunch of other goodies. Not a bad day of progress, we'll be fishing soon enough!

It's really difficult finding time to get much done during daytime hours lately. Snuck in a couple hours here and there over the past couple weeks and managed to get most of the electrical wiring done.



Got the battery box, buss bars and two smaller 12v batteries installed. Going to use the 27 group marine battery for TM, nav lights and bilge pump. Wired the 7ah batteries in parallel to power the GPS.



More wiring done. Onboard 2 bank charger installed. Converted an old toolbox into a console for wires, switches and mounting the GPS.



Another shot of the wire jungle. I'm pretty embarassed by my craftsmanship compared to a lot of other threads on here. Gotta start somewhere, I guess.



The box cover sure helps hide a lot of that mess, but those makeshift brass battery posts need some refinement. Oh, and the cable management. And the... pretty much everything. To my surprise, I've yet to use any JB weld or zip ties on this project. That's probably a good thing.



It's alive!



Not super pretty under that hood either... It's all functional, crimped and heat shrunk though.



All in all, feels good to be just about done with the electrical. Still have to do the motor work though. Lower unit oil, plugs, carb rebuild, water pump/impeller rebuild. Also got some memory foam and waterproof camo fabric to make up some bench seat cushions. Can't wait to get this thing done and enjoy the water.

Nice job so far!

A general question: I don't understand the usage of the foam "for floatation". Unless I forgot all principles of physics, it's displacement that floats the hull, so why the need for that foam at all under the deck?


CMOS

The foam is for flotation in the event of capsizing or swamping the boat. The extra flotation keeps the boat from sinking straight to the bottom, giving you something to cling to in an emergency and making it a lot easier to recover your boat and motor. Some guys don't feel it's necessary for their applications, but the river I frequent kills multiple people each year, so I'm going to try to lean on the safe side of things.

I used a formula I found in this thread https://forum.tinboats.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25283 to calculate how much foam I needed to add to float the boat, the motors, the added weight from decks/electronics/etc, 3 guys and gear. If I did the math correctly, I should be a little bit on the overkill side of things, but I'd really like to have something to hang onto if the worst happens.