Jon Boat Rebuild

I bought my 16ft tinboat a couple years ago with a 30 mercury and a trailer for 1600. bought it for duck hunting and flats fishing on the chesapeake bay. Floor was starting to get soft and boat was feeling a little flimsy so pulled out the middle wood seat and the floor and found quite a few cracks in the stringers. SOOOOO... looks like i am going to tear this bad boy down and rebuild it. First off not sure of make and model. any guesses? First off i am going to remove filth and all accesories, then ladder brace the floor and reinforce sides a bit. adding a bunch of custom mods and steelflexing the hull inside and out..

I hear PT wood is a big no no so my question is if i take regular plywood, prime it, then bedliner it, will it last?

Also any ill wanted side effects if i brace the floor with 1.5x2 inch aluminum tubing from rib to rib to tighten everything up?

Would also like to add float pods but afraid boat being so old that welding on transom could produce holes. Already some pitting showing. My main objective is to get this thing back to a 10 and to where it will last for many more years.

Boat before

boat stripped down and ready to power wash

 

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boat cleaned up ready to start working on it in my garage

seat brace and some floor bracing done...

floor done and seat cut and tan bedlinered. FYI If you want to texture your bedliner coating to a non skid finish, i sprinkled saw dust in it after primer and with 2 layers of rustleum spray can liner, it has a great texture.

trolling bracket parts

assembled bracket

got the boat over to the welder. In the meantime had to work on something so camo patterned the seat, rear floor board, and battery boxes.

 got the seat posts mounted and seats installed, got my 1115 tempress tackle tray hatch painted up in camo and got the motor primed and repainted with a fresh camo job.  stilll had a lot of painting and epoxy work in my future.

Got all the cross bracing i was adding cut and in place to try and make her more sturdy...

got all those welded in along with new angled aluminum pieces on port and starboard for middle bench seat. Also added float pods since its going to be a flats fishing/ duck machine

Primed the whole inside and the pods with self etching green today after giving everything a thorough vinegar bath. I then used lowes 3M foam board and level the floor in between all the ribs and bracing.

I scored a killer deal on a 4x8 sheet of aluminum so ditched the wood floor and cut out and layed the floor as well

 

Saturday had a warmer day so decided to go ahead and do the inside of the boat in rustoleum tan aerosol bedliner. Worked great and took the slickness off the aluminum floor( bare aluminum and wader boots do not go together very well). The tan should get too warm either in the summer time. I noticed the bed liner also deadened the vibrations in the boat as well.

After that had dried we had to get the heavy son of a gun off the trailer... not a fun project for me and buddy and my 75 year old dad. did it though thru some ingenuinity. Once the boat ws off and up side down we commenced to stripping the bottom of the rig.

Got that down pretty good and decided to switch gears to the trailer while nothern tool was open. Original i dea was new bunk holders and leaf springs bc the others were pretty rusted up. Turned into might as well dot he axel too. Bad idea... had to do some fabricating to make new axle fit due to factory welded leafspring cups int he wrong place. Three trips to northern tool and by 1am we finshed up the trailer rebuild. Everything is now brand new besides the trailer lights. If spring will ever arrive here in VA and it quits raining and snowing i might be able to get bad bottom spots marine tex'd up and the super slick steelflex on her. Come on warmth and sunshine!

 

So finally got some nice weather and got the project wrapped up. most work was done at night so not many pictures of the progress but here she is....

gonna be a flats fishing/ duck slaying machine. took it out today and she handles wake a whole lot better and the pods make a world of difference on getting on plane and overall handling/ ride quality. I believe it keeps the bow down and put more of the V into the wave instead of slapping on flat bottom portion of the hull.