Stevens 1870 Weld Craft

[Poormans Boatright]

Most of yall know me by my boat " The Poormans Boatright". I had a guy get a hold of me the other day stating he had seen my build on Tin Boats and on 2Coolfishing, he was interested in doing some mods to his Weld Craft. So I drove over to his house to see what all he wanted to do. Steven (the boat owner) tells me that he is interested in adding some front rails for flounder fishing lights, kinda like on my boat. He's also wanting to add a rail type mount for a air motor over the engine, and possibly a full aluminum floor. After looking his boat over and discussing any leak issues, I told him if your going to do all this fabricating you might as well fix the bottom of the boat before we start all this. He agrees, stating the former owner jb welded several spots on the underside. O.K., he brings the boat to me and I get 8 guys to come over and pick the beast of a boat up off the trailer and flip it over and put it back on the trailer, man this thing is huge! So me and a friend go to repairing the bottom pits and holes with my spoolamatic mig gun,We just ran beads over the pitted areas. I ground all the jb weld off and welded a few patches over the bigger spots. After all welding was completed, I sanded and shot the entire bottom with Allweld OD green paint. Then I had to get a hold of the same 8 guys to come and help me lift the boat and flip it back over and set it on the trailer, only this time it cost me beer and barbeque! Did I mention this thing is huge?

Now that the boat is ready and back on the trailer I can begin fabricating the front rails, I got started with a few bends but that was about all I had time for this weekend, I'll have to work on it during the week after I get off work. Follow along and lets see how this beast comes out. More pics as progress escalates. Rod.

 

[gillhunter]

I didn't know they made a 18/70. This will be a fun build to follow. What kind of beer was used? :LOL2: :LOL2: :LOL2: :LOL2:

 

[hsiftac]

Sweet, enjoyed your last build, Looking forward to seeing more progress on that beast of a jon boat

 

[bigwave]

Wow that thing looks huge. I cant wait to see what yall do with her.

 

[Poormans Boatright]

Gillhunter: The beer of choice is Bud Light, I can't handle Budweiser no more, gives me a headache in the morning!

hsiftac & bigwave: We'll see how much he wants to do. You could do alot with this rig.

 

[Gator McClusky]

Gillhunter: The beer of choice is Bud Light, I can't handle Budweiser no more, gives me a headache in the morning!

hsiftac & bigwave: We'll see how much he wants to do. You could do alot with this rig.

I have a 2060 Duracraft, I will keep an eye on this. Anxious to see the bends and the fab. work.

What type of welder is that . Looks like mig from here. I have a Lincoln Electric 125 that will mig aluminum, I have never used it for aluminum but it wouldnt cost much to convert. What you think about me using that machine for boat builds instead of getting a high frequency tig machine.

thakns in advance for your thoughts

 

[Poormans Boatright]

Gator: My welder is a Millermatic 250 with a spoolamatic added, its a fairly expensive unit. The lincoln 125 unit, in my opinion will not get hot enough to do quality results, not to mention its duty cycle. Yes you can run aluminum wire through it but the wire has to travel through the length of the cable in the liner and the problem with that is the soft aluminum wire gets hung up and you will get fustrated real quick at the gun. On the spoolamatic the small spool of wire is mounted on the gun and only has to travel through a hard straight liner about 5" long compared to a mig guns cable that is 6'-8' long or so and bent. Again this is only my opinion based on my experience with these machines. Someone might chime in and say they weld aluminum jobs all the time with a 125. Yea, but with what kind of results? Not good enough to come from my shop. For my aluminum jobs, I use both a spool gun and high freq. tig, it all depends on what the task is. You can see my machines in more detail by clicking on my link to my build, I posted pics of both processes during the build. Good luck_Rod

 

[Jonboat Jerry]

Hey Poorman, That made me flash back to the early days of my build. Great to see you doing a big boat build on TB.
Keep the pictures coming will you?....Jerry

 

[Poormans Boatright]

Jerry, It would be nice if he wanted to take it as far as you did with your build. But I don't think that is his intent. I am willing to do the work all he has to do is say the word.

I got a little work done on Stevens boat this afternoon. I finished the bends on the first rail and got it tacked on. I got one upright leg cut mitered and tacked on also. More to come as progress is made.

For those that are interested in the welding part of the build, I took some close up shots of the spool gun so you can see the internals and get a better understanding of how the gun works.

 

[Poormans Boatright]

Raining all day here on the coast, got a little more done today. I got the middle rail bent and tacked on. You may ask why does rain keep you from fabbing? Reason is this boat is so big its taking up what available space I have in the shop and I need to be outside with some of the equipment, and with the door closed there's really no room to work. Sounds like a good enough reason to go drink beer anyway. Here's a few updated pics.

 

[Poormans Boatright]

I finished up the front rails on Stevens boat today. Next I will be working on the air motor mount. Here's updated pics.

 

[fool4fish1226]

As always great work :beer:

 

[Poormans Boatright]

Thanx Fool, I am going out of town this weekend, so I wont get to work on the air motor mount much, I'm thinkin about how I'm gonna go about doin' it. I want it to look nice.

 

[bigwave]

You said you were putting a mount for the air motor....are you talking about one of those swamp motors, or is he going to make this thing an Airboat.

 

[Poormans Boatright]

bigwave: The boat is going be a airboat, but not the type with the huge prop that run the swamps. It's going to use a regular outboard as any boat, only it will also have a small engine mounted above the outboard that will have a small prop mounted to it. The small engines are usually 8-10 hp briggs or hondas, depending on the size of the boat. The purpose of the air motor is to allow the boat to get in extra shallow water and move along at a slow pace to gig flounder.

 

[bigwave]

Ok, makes sense now....this thing is going to be one heck of a giging machine....I grew up in Flour Bluff Texas.....spent many a night gigging flatties on the boat hole basin, and the King Ranch shoreline. The upper Laguna Madre is a great place to gig flounders, and the trout and redfish are truely Texas sized :lol: Man I sure do miss Texas.

 

[Poormans Boatright]

Bigwave: Yea, your right about the Laguna Madre, that's where most of the trophy trout come from.

Got some work done on the boat this weekend, I got most of the rear air motor mount tacked welded together. Still have some more to go but the basic shape is there. Here's the updated pics.

 

[fool4fish1226]

That is going to be one bas a$$ ride - great work so far :beer:

 

[Poormans Boatright]

Thanks Fool.

I got the boat's front rails and back air motor support completed last week. I also fabbed up a trolling motor mount for the front of the boat. The back rails were a bit trickier than the front, reason being because of the compound angles to deal with to make everything fit and look right. The side bracing bars were a bit of a headache to fit in as they too had two different angles meaning to different miters to deal with. All said and done I am happy with the way the whole rig came out. Steven seemed to be happy also, (at least he said he was) he's probably gettin' tired of shelling out $ to me for all this. He came and picked it up last night and said that was all he wanted to do as of right now, and that he would contact me when he was ready to proceed with more on the boat, such as the floor etc. We'll see how far he takes this beast. Here's the lasted pics.

 

[hsiftac]

Looking good