Breach's 1952 Alumacraft 14 foot shallow V.

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breachless

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Wyoming, MN
Well, after being completely and utterly impressed with the many many fantastic mods here, I finally managed to pick my jaw up off the floor long enough to begin the planning phases of doing one of these myself. I have no idea how it will turn out, and I am almost certain it won't look nearly as good as many of the boats found here (even though I plan on shamelessly copying every good idea I see...)

So here we go, here she is: a 1952 Alumacraft Shallow V. My Great Grandfather supposedly purchased this boat brand new back in 1952 to use as a life-boat for his fishing vessel. He eventually gave it to my grandfather, who used and abused it for quite a few years before giving it to my dad, who also used and abused it for many years (with a TON of help from me as a kid growing up). Some time when I was a kid the original outboard was stolen, so my dad put this mid to late 80's Johnson 15 hp on it brand new at the time. I can say that as a kid, I spent more time with my feet planted in the bottom of this boat than dry land (grew up on a lake) so the boat holds a ton of personal value to me (plus I share my first and last name with all of the people who owned it before me!) I am very excited to modernize it a bit and make it a little bit better suited for stalking the bass in the shallows.

Physically, it's got plenty of dings and dents, but it doesn't leak, which is pretty amazing. My primary focus on this project is to build a deck up front and find a way to mount a bow-mounted trolling motor I can run with my feet. To be honest, just doing this would be enough to make me happy, but the dry storage underneath would be nice too. Weight is a concern as well. I want to try to frame the whole thing with Aluminum, and then put the wood deck down on top of it and carpet it, but weight is secondary to function. In addition to the deck, I am kind of on the fence about whether or not to remove the middle bench: this will be determined when I figure out how I want to do the floor. In another thread I saw Baitcaster put some rubber pieces down on his floor, and I thought that was great. If I do that though, the bench has to stay though so that if I bring a third person fishing they have somewhere to sit (I don't know how I would install a 3rd pedestal seat on the floor in the middle without adding an actual floor with which to mount said seat...) Anyone have any suggestions as far as the flooring goes?

Of course, any suggestions are more than welcome: this whole process is VERY scary for me (and exciting of course). This will probably be a LOOOONG project: as a new dad, my time is kind of limited...

Anyway, here are some pics:

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Kewl boat with an even kewler story.

What's the story with the pvc?
 
So here we go, here she is: a 1952 Alumacraft Shallow V. My Great Grandfather supposedly purchased this boat brand new back in 1952 to use as a life-boat for his fishing vessel. He eventually gave it to my grandfather, who used and abused it for quite a few years before giving it to my dad, who also used and abused it for many years (with a TON of help from me as a kid growing up). Some time when I was a kid the original outboard was stolen, so my dad put this mid to late 80's Johnson 15 hp on it brand new at the time. I can say that as a kid, I spent more time with my feet planted in the bottom of this boat than dry land (grew up on a lake) so the boat holds a ton of personal value to me (plus I share my first and last name with all of the people who owned it before me!) I am very excited to modernize it a bit and make it a little bit better suited for stalking the bass in the shallows.

thats too cool man, pass it down to your youngs one day
 
Brine said:
What's the story with the pvc?

That's just something I threw together when I first got the boat this summer: all the wiring runs through it. The old man just had the wires kind of running across the floor and it really bugged me so that was my solution to clean it up.
 
Well, I have been scratching my chin for weeks now trying to figure out how to start this project. It doesn't help much that every time I have a free moment to work on it I go fishing in it instead...

Anyway, I scored this from my neighbor today. He was cutting down trees and a branch fell on it. I figured that should be just about enough aluminum to frame out the front and rear decks, and maybe even the rod locker...

Ladder.jpg
 
Well, the lakes around here are pretty much solid ice now, so the time has come to actually do something with this. In case anyone wonders, I confirmed today that these aluminum ladders are indeed strong. I stretched a piece across some cinder blocks about 6 feet apart, and jumped on it in the middle with everything I had, and they didn't really flex at all. They should do nicely!
 
I had an Alumacraft just like that:

https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11914

Looking forward to your progress!

Matt
 
I have a 14ft Sea King similar to yours........I stripped out the insides and framed it with aluminum and decked it with 15/32 plywood treated with Thompson’s Water seal then carpeted ....It is still very light and can picked up easily. =D> Your trailer looks like mine.
That looks like it is a TeeNee Trailer and parts are available almost anywhere.......

https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=15880

https://www.wallysvintagetrailers.com/Tee_Nee_Trailers.php

https://woodyboats.blogspot.com/2009/08/tee-nee-trailer-brochures-is-that-roy.html
 
I missed this thread when initially posted. Very cool boat old boat and as Brine said, even cooler story.

If it were me I'd work around the center seat, one for stability and two because you'd hate to tear up a family heirloom.

Can't wait to see your progress.
 
Well, the temps are hovering in the 30's now, so I have started mulling over this project again. I took out the front seat, battery, etc just to kind of visualize... I have been doing a lot of thinking about that middle bench, and I guess for some strange reason, I feel compelled to NOT do anything to the existing boat. This project will have to kind of work around what is already there. I cut out the bent section of the ladder mentioned above and just kind of set it in there (again, to visualize...) See the pics:
2011-03-06_13-36-41_697.jpg
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2011-03-06_13-38-08_409.jpg

I will have several sections of the ladder cut to kind of "frame" the whole front deck, and those will basically sit on top of the existing benches. I am thinking of maybe using the oar mounts as a means to keep the whole thing in place, in addition to some additional vertical support in between the benches as needed. I am certain this will hold and give me a really great platform to fish from, but I am thinking the challenge will be in finding a creative way to utilize storage underneath the deck. For the decking itself, I am leaning toward straight up sheet aluminum, or some of the composite stuff I have seen used here with carpet (the two sheets of thin aluminum with the composite core). I really want to avoid using wood here since my favorite thing about this boat is how light it is.

I guess my question would be does anybody see anything wrong with this idea? Perhaps some suggestions? I seem to be stuck in an eternal planning mode and just can't seem to commit to an idea. I would also like to turn the back into a small platform to fish from (just one that runs from the back of the boat to the front of the rear bench). I have no idea how I will pull this off yet...

Anyway, I would love to hear some ideas and suggestions/point out anything stupid that I am about to do...
 
Well, I have been busy with the boat lately and have finally made some progress on it.

I managed to use the ladder for the main support for the front deck. After getting that in place, I cut the ladder rungs from a piece to run at angles for the outside, and with some other pieces of aluminum that I scored last year, I managed to frame the very front section. It's about as sturdy as it gets. Here are a few pics of the front framing job:
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2011-06-12_15-30-28_394.jpg

I then began cutting the plywood to fit. I still want to do an aluminum deck, but I figured I would throw something together with the plywood I had lying around just to see how I like it before I go and drop the cash on the needed aluminum. I ended up cutting the wood into 4 different pieces. One for the bow, one large piece for the middle that can be opened up, and then to two side pieces.
2011-06-19_12-42-52_175.jpg
2011-06-19_12-43-00_542.jpg

I also decided to go ahead and throw some carpet on as well... Perhaps a bit hasty, but I needed a win today and wanted to see how it would look so I went ahead and did it anyway. Here is how things look with the carpet on:
2011-06-19_13-22-24_621.jpg

And here is a shot with that big hatch open: One of the rungs has since been cut out to make it easier to get in there and charge the batter and to toss lifejackets and that sort of thing in there.
2011-06-19_13-42-33_822.jpg

And finally, here is how she sits now with the trolling motor attached:
2011-06-19_15-19-54_814.jpg

So that's where I am at. Still very much a work in progress, but it's nice to see it finally coming together. I haven't decided if I will deck all the way back to the next bench or not... I took it out for a test run yesterday just to see how it sits in the water and it's not bad! It's stable enough, and the room on the existing deck is sufficient, but I don't like sitting that far forward: I would much prefer to stand a few feet further back where it's just a little bit more stable. Stable is maybe not even the word: there just isn't a lot of room for standing firm with one foot on the foot controls while balancing on the other when big waves come rolling in. Also, the trolling motor is obviously older and used, and seems really loose in the mount, and the button on the foot pedal takes a hell of a lot of pressure to make it go. I will no doubt be a challenge to try to correct these problems, but otherwise I couldn't be happier with the results so far.
 
Thanks! Well, I scored a whole bunch of aluminum this weekend: a bunch of I beams and a lot of square beams... Which means I am probably going to end up taking this all off and starting over: I have enough aluminum to do pretty much the whole boat now, so that's probably what's coming next: full deck all the way back to the middle bench, carpeted floors, and a small rear platform. I should also be able to fabricate a proper trolling motor mount. I am very excited. I will probably have enough aluminum left over to do another boat or two! I was pretty proud of my ladder idea, but now that I have all this stuff, I don't really need to use it (though I still might: it makes a really nice, rigid center for the platform without any vertical support what-so-ever. The problem is the height. If I use it, I will have to find a way to make those play nice together since all the new stuff is not nearly as tall. What to do?
 

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