MY APOLOGIES TO READERS: DUE TO NEW PHOTOBUCKET THIRD-PARTY HOSTING POLICIES THE PHOTO'S ACCOMPANYING THIS THREAD ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE. WITHOUT THE PHOTO'S THE INFORMATION HERE HAS LOST MUCH OF ITS USEFULNESS SO PROCEED IF YOU WISH. GREED AND MONEY AS USUAL TRUMP EVERYTHING.
This is my first boat so I didn't have much experience to base my choice of boat and motor. I have fished all my life - my folks owned a resort when I was a kid - but never owned my own boat before.
I think a lot people believe that bigger is better when it comes to choosing a boat. I decided to go small for two reasons. First, I have a small pop-up camper and wanted a boat small enough to carry on top. I didn't intend to even get a trailer at first believing I would only take it on camping trips and because I didn't really have a place to park two trailers (It didn't take long to figure that one out!). Anyway, the camper is only 8' long so I couldn't really haul a 14' boat on top, plus weight was a factor. The second reason for a small boat is I like to go on small lakes and in areas that the big boats can't get into. The lake I fish most is so low right now that the big boats can't even get off the trailers.
I chose the Lowe 1236 because it's the widest 12' jon I could find and because I liked the seat configuration. I got a riveted boat because the weight was less than a welded one. The motor is a Nissan 9.8 4-stroke w/electric start. It's a nice motor and I'm really glad I went with the 4-stroke because it's so much quieter and there are no mixed gas exhaust fumes to inhale when trolling. I got a too-small 30lb thrust electric trolling motor. When things are quiet the trolling motor is fine but in wind the flat bottom slides across the water so easily that the motor sometimes struggles to keep up. I'm in the weeds and lily pads a lot so this can be a problem at times.
My choice of boat/motor wasn't completely dictated by my budget. I could have spent more, but decided to go small and to make any upgrades or modifications myself. I like the challenge, and being the son of a farmer, like to invent ways to make things work. Also, it's good to solve problems with your head instead of your credit card. So, there's the background.
I bought the boat/motor last fall and took it out enough times to break in the motor and to figure out some things I wanted to do. Weight distribution was an issue. With the motor, me, the battery and gas can all in back, the boat practically never got up on plane. Even with a second person on board, the weight was too far back. I screwed a piece of plywood to the floor between the front and middle seats and moved the gas and battery forward to test the weight distribution. This configuration worked much better so I decided to make a small deck over the front seat to contain the gas tank, battery and hopefully some other things. Also, I can't park the boat in a garage and wanted a lock-up for some of the things I always take along like life jackets, etc. So the plan was basically to make a small storage area under a front deck, put in a floor, add some navigation lights and other minor conveniences.
First the front seat came out. Being at the bow it seemed that it didn’t really add anything structural to the boat and I tried to make use of every little bit of space I could. On the right side you can see the gas hose that runs to the back and on the left the 8ga wires from the battery to the rear of the boat. I ran two PVC tubes through the bottom to act as conduits – one for the navigation lights and the other for some future wire pull that I didn’t think of before the floor went in.
After I had run the conduits and wires I could think of below the floor, I added 1-1/4” of foam for flotation and sound insulation between the ribs. As it turns out the insulation was a really good idea because I am always clunking things around in the boat and the noise when running is considerably less. I installed the foam with foam glue and weighted it down until it was dry.
Once the foam was in place I cut out cardboard templates for the floor. To me this was one of the most important steps because it let me see what I was going to get before I invested in the real material and it helped avoid making bad cuts and wasting the real stuff when the time came. You can’t really see in the photo’s but I rough-cut the template around the ribs and then filled in the specific shapes with small pieces of tape. When I was done I had a pretty accurate template of all the shapes I would cut.
One big decision for me was what material to make the deck and floor out of. Again, I was concerned about weight so I had to be careful about the thickness as well as the type of material I used. Even though it was a lot more expensive than plywood, I decided to use Sintra, a PVC sheet material. I was able to cut out (barely) all the parts I needed out of one 1/2” - 4’x8’sheet of material, otherwise, at $110/sheet, I would have had to use something else. The Sintra is lighter than plywood, cuts easily and will last forever. The floor was pretty easy.
I took a long time trying to figure out the deck. I decided to use aluminum angle for the framing to save weight and I got some for free. I engineered the framing as I went along, trying to figure out one problem at a time. I decided to pop-rivet the frame as I can’t weld so I just cut and clamped my way along until I had figured out what configuration worked best. You can use a carbide-tipped blade in a power miter saw to cut aluminum stock, just be absolutely sure to wear face protection.
There were two problems with the deck that I got stuck on and couldn’t decide how to solve. One was the deck hatch. I was afraid of doing a crappy job on the hatch if I made it myself but I didn’t want to spend the $ on a factory one. I looked online at a lot of suppliers and finally found one that was big enough but not too expensive so I opted to buy the hatch cover.
The second was more serious. I intended to put the gas tank and battery both under the front deck. I’m not sure how real the danger of gas fumes building up inside the deck is and a possible spark from the battery causing an explosion, but it was real enough for me to take some time to figure out how to separate the two. It took a bit of work but I managed to seal off a separate gas tank compartment within the deck space.
This meant that I had to also have separate access to the gas tank and I used a 6”d. round deck plate placed directly over the fill cap on the gas can. You probably have already seen the flaw in this plan, but you can’t get gas tank out through a 6” hole. I figured this little problem out the first time I thought of actually putting the boat on top of my camper and not on the boat trailer. Needless to say, the upside-down gas tank isn’t going to work too well. For now, the deck top is screwed on and I can remove the tank that way, but maybe a second hatch cover big enough for the tank to fit through will be the answer. I have been hauling it on a trailer for now so I haven’t had to face this mistake yet. You can see in the photo I foamed the cavity around the tank to seal it from the rest of the deck. It does a pretty good job of sealing the two compartments once the deck top is on. I also added in a ventilation grille for the gas tank side of the deck. Note the foam all around for the seal and the cardboard template to the left of the boat.
The battery tie-down.
The gas tank tie-down.
The deck before carpet. This is the black Sintra PVC sheet material. I glued the carpet on with carpet glue – contact cement. The carpet was medium grade marine carpet. Given that the Sintra will last forever, I might have spent the extra to get a longer lasting carpet. I keep the boat covered so maybe the carpet will hold up ok.
The deck on and flooring in. The deck has the hatch cover, 6” round deck plate over the gas filler, seat mount and trolling motor plug-in all installed. Note that I ran another PVC tube along the left side (the red tube) for the battery wires, trying to eliminate as many hook-snagging wires as possible.
The gas-fill cover.
The hatch and gas-fill cover.
The finished floor and deck.
The mistakes –
Besides the gas tank mistake the other main one turned out to be putting the battery in front. After all the trouble to separate the battery and gas, the weight distribution with the additional weight of the deck materials in front turned out to be too much weight forward. I couldn’t get the boat up on plane with that much weight in front so given the choice of moving either the gas or the battery to the back I opted for the battery. It was an easy fix and the 8ga. wires running front-to-back were still good to connect the bow-mounted trolling motor. The battery move was pretty simple.
I don’t have pics of the boat with seats, motor, etc. on and the small electrical control panel yet but I’ll add those later.
A few $ saving things I figured out along the way –
It seems anything sold as a boat part is more expensive than it would otherwise be. Lots of 12v DC stuff can be bought at car parts stores for less than at most boat places. There are many specific marine parts of course and you have to be careful of the corrosion that will certainly happen, but it is possible to save a little $ by looking around.
I looked for a swivel mount for my locator. The ones I found were an incredible $40 or more. I solved this by getting a tripod mount for $10. It has 1/4x20 threads and I just tapped the hard plastic mount of my Humminbird to fit. It only has a ball-and-socket at one end, but it does the job ok.
I get into some real messes in the weeds. I have a “weedless” prop for my trolling motor but it still gets fouled up. I also have a paddle but I need to reach bottom in order to move sometimes. I looked at push-poles at the boat shops and was amazed by how expensive they are. I did buy the foot for $10 and put in on the end of a telescoping paint pole. I had a pole laying around that extended to about 10’ so when collapsed it is about 5’ long. It has gotten me out of some real messes, it’s aluminum/fiberglass and it works.
I bought lots of parts at the end of the boating season and saved a lot of dough in the process. I happened across a sale at a Northern Tool location near me and bought seats and navigation lights for half price.
I purchased the Sintra at a Plexiglass seller. Cabela’s has a similar material called King Starboard that is considerably more expensive. Whatever you buy and wherever you get it, the PVC material is expensive. I guess one consideration is how long you will be keeping your boat and the life span of the wooden materials. What I decided on will live on well beyond me.
My brother came by over the weekend and did the wiring for me. I couldn't figure it out. He used to re-wire dashboards on car restorations so he made it work. It turns out that the bow lights weren't wired according to the diagram that came with them. Their engineers may work harder, but we still had to figure it out. Now I can clean it up and get some photo's of the thing as it is now. I think I may be done with most of the work which means I'll have to get another boat.
This is my first boat so I didn't have much experience to base my choice of boat and motor. I have fished all my life - my folks owned a resort when I was a kid - but never owned my own boat before.
I think a lot people believe that bigger is better when it comes to choosing a boat. I decided to go small for two reasons. First, I have a small pop-up camper and wanted a boat small enough to carry on top. I didn't intend to even get a trailer at first believing I would only take it on camping trips and because I didn't really have a place to park two trailers (It didn't take long to figure that one out!). Anyway, the camper is only 8' long so I couldn't really haul a 14' boat on top, plus weight was a factor. The second reason for a small boat is I like to go on small lakes and in areas that the big boats can't get into. The lake I fish most is so low right now that the big boats can't even get off the trailers.
I chose the Lowe 1236 because it's the widest 12' jon I could find and because I liked the seat configuration. I got a riveted boat because the weight was less than a welded one. The motor is a Nissan 9.8 4-stroke w/electric start. It's a nice motor and I'm really glad I went with the 4-stroke because it's so much quieter and there are no mixed gas exhaust fumes to inhale when trolling. I got a too-small 30lb thrust electric trolling motor. When things are quiet the trolling motor is fine but in wind the flat bottom slides across the water so easily that the motor sometimes struggles to keep up. I'm in the weeds and lily pads a lot so this can be a problem at times.
My choice of boat/motor wasn't completely dictated by my budget. I could have spent more, but decided to go small and to make any upgrades or modifications myself. I like the challenge, and being the son of a farmer, like to invent ways to make things work. Also, it's good to solve problems with your head instead of your credit card. So, there's the background.
I bought the boat/motor last fall and took it out enough times to break in the motor and to figure out some things I wanted to do. Weight distribution was an issue. With the motor, me, the battery and gas can all in back, the boat practically never got up on plane. Even with a second person on board, the weight was too far back. I screwed a piece of plywood to the floor between the front and middle seats and moved the gas and battery forward to test the weight distribution. This configuration worked much better so I decided to make a small deck over the front seat to contain the gas tank, battery and hopefully some other things. Also, I can't park the boat in a garage and wanted a lock-up for some of the things I always take along like life jackets, etc. So the plan was basically to make a small storage area under a front deck, put in a floor, add some navigation lights and other minor conveniences.
First the front seat came out. Being at the bow it seemed that it didn’t really add anything structural to the boat and I tried to make use of every little bit of space I could. On the right side you can see the gas hose that runs to the back and on the left the 8ga wires from the battery to the rear of the boat. I ran two PVC tubes through the bottom to act as conduits – one for the navigation lights and the other for some future wire pull that I didn’t think of before the floor went in.
After I had run the conduits and wires I could think of below the floor, I added 1-1/4” of foam for flotation and sound insulation between the ribs. As it turns out the insulation was a really good idea because I am always clunking things around in the boat and the noise when running is considerably less. I installed the foam with foam glue and weighted it down until it was dry.
Once the foam was in place I cut out cardboard templates for the floor. To me this was one of the most important steps because it let me see what I was going to get before I invested in the real material and it helped avoid making bad cuts and wasting the real stuff when the time came. You can’t really see in the photo’s but I rough-cut the template around the ribs and then filled in the specific shapes with small pieces of tape. When I was done I had a pretty accurate template of all the shapes I would cut.
One big decision for me was what material to make the deck and floor out of. Again, I was concerned about weight so I had to be careful about the thickness as well as the type of material I used. Even though it was a lot more expensive than plywood, I decided to use Sintra, a PVC sheet material. I was able to cut out (barely) all the parts I needed out of one 1/2” - 4’x8’sheet of material, otherwise, at $110/sheet, I would have had to use something else. The Sintra is lighter than plywood, cuts easily and will last forever. The floor was pretty easy.
I took a long time trying to figure out the deck. I decided to use aluminum angle for the framing to save weight and I got some for free. I engineered the framing as I went along, trying to figure out one problem at a time. I decided to pop-rivet the frame as I can’t weld so I just cut and clamped my way along until I had figured out what configuration worked best. You can use a carbide-tipped blade in a power miter saw to cut aluminum stock, just be absolutely sure to wear face protection.
There were two problems with the deck that I got stuck on and couldn’t decide how to solve. One was the deck hatch. I was afraid of doing a crappy job on the hatch if I made it myself but I didn’t want to spend the $ on a factory one. I looked online at a lot of suppliers and finally found one that was big enough but not too expensive so I opted to buy the hatch cover.
The second was more serious. I intended to put the gas tank and battery both under the front deck. I’m not sure how real the danger of gas fumes building up inside the deck is and a possible spark from the battery causing an explosion, but it was real enough for me to take some time to figure out how to separate the two. It took a bit of work but I managed to seal off a separate gas tank compartment within the deck space.
This meant that I had to also have separate access to the gas tank and I used a 6”d. round deck plate placed directly over the fill cap on the gas can. You probably have already seen the flaw in this plan, but you can’t get gas tank out through a 6” hole. I figured this little problem out the first time I thought of actually putting the boat on top of my camper and not on the boat trailer. Needless to say, the upside-down gas tank isn’t going to work too well. For now, the deck top is screwed on and I can remove the tank that way, but maybe a second hatch cover big enough for the tank to fit through will be the answer. I have been hauling it on a trailer for now so I haven’t had to face this mistake yet. You can see in the photo I foamed the cavity around the tank to seal it from the rest of the deck. It does a pretty good job of sealing the two compartments once the deck top is on. I also added in a ventilation grille for the gas tank side of the deck. Note the foam all around for the seal and the cardboard template to the left of the boat.
The battery tie-down.
The gas tank tie-down.
The deck before carpet. This is the black Sintra PVC sheet material. I glued the carpet on with carpet glue – contact cement. The carpet was medium grade marine carpet. Given that the Sintra will last forever, I might have spent the extra to get a longer lasting carpet. I keep the boat covered so maybe the carpet will hold up ok.
The deck on and flooring in. The deck has the hatch cover, 6” round deck plate over the gas filler, seat mount and trolling motor plug-in all installed. Note that I ran another PVC tube along the left side (the red tube) for the battery wires, trying to eliminate as many hook-snagging wires as possible.
The gas-fill cover.
The hatch and gas-fill cover.
The finished floor and deck.
The mistakes –
Besides the gas tank mistake the other main one turned out to be putting the battery in front. After all the trouble to separate the battery and gas, the weight distribution with the additional weight of the deck materials in front turned out to be too much weight forward. I couldn’t get the boat up on plane with that much weight in front so given the choice of moving either the gas or the battery to the back I opted for the battery. It was an easy fix and the 8ga. wires running front-to-back were still good to connect the bow-mounted trolling motor. The battery move was pretty simple.
I don’t have pics of the boat with seats, motor, etc. on and the small electrical control panel yet but I’ll add those later.
A few $ saving things I figured out along the way –
It seems anything sold as a boat part is more expensive than it would otherwise be. Lots of 12v DC stuff can be bought at car parts stores for less than at most boat places. There are many specific marine parts of course and you have to be careful of the corrosion that will certainly happen, but it is possible to save a little $ by looking around.
I looked for a swivel mount for my locator. The ones I found were an incredible $40 or more. I solved this by getting a tripod mount for $10. It has 1/4x20 threads and I just tapped the hard plastic mount of my Humminbird to fit. It only has a ball-and-socket at one end, but it does the job ok.
I get into some real messes in the weeds. I have a “weedless” prop for my trolling motor but it still gets fouled up. I also have a paddle but I need to reach bottom in order to move sometimes. I looked at push-poles at the boat shops and was amazed by how expensive they are. I did buy the foot for $10 and put in on the end of a telescoping paint pole. I had a pole laying around that extended to about 10’ so when collapsed it is about 5’ long. It has gotten me out of some real messes, it’s aluminum/fiberglass and it works.
I bought lots of parts at the end of the boating season and saved a lot of dough in the process. I happened across a sale at a Northern Tool location near me and bought seats and navigation lights for half price.
I purchased the Sintra at a Plexiglass seller. Cabela’s has a similar material called King Starboard that is considerably more expensive. Whatever you buy and wherever you get it, the PVC material is expensive. I guess one consideration is how long you will be keeping your boat and the life span of the wooden materials. What I decided on will live on well beyond me.
My brother came by over the weekend and did the wiring for me. I couldn't figure it out. He used to re-wire dashboards on car restorations so he made it work. It turns out that the bow lights weren't wired according to the diagram that came with them. Their engineers may work harder, but we still had to figure it out. Now I can clean it up and get some photo's of the thing as it is now. I think I may be done with most of the work which means I'll have to get another boat.