ZiptiesandJBWeld
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- Apr 17, 2015
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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!
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!