Antique Boat to Mini-Bass Boat (Full Build!)

so if you've been hanging around the efficient community on YouTube for any length of time you probably know that people like to take these very simple little John votes and turn them into bass fishing rigs or more modern type boat designs this video is basically going to be my version of that I've got a very cheap boat off of Craigslist and I'm gonna be refurbishing it to fit my needs starting from the ground up from scratch and turning into something that I am very proud of so this here is the general diagram for what we're shooting for and we're gonna see if we can't get there so I hope you enjoy so the first step in this build was to strip off all the old chipping and flaking paint basically over time these people use this boat as a duck boat and you know driven it around B it up and the paint started to wear off on certain spots so what we're doing here is working it over with a stainless steel wire brush in a drill or just a standard grinder now we're just gonna be taking off all that weak paint that's not going to hold the next paint job very well we're gonna make sure that the aluminum is what we're binding to instead of old paint what you see here is a self etching primer it's a really cheap alternative to stripping the paint all the way off there's pretty much going to chemically sand or etch the paint on top along with the aluminum on the bottom so that our new coat of paint sticks very well without having to strip all the paint off and sand the aluminum itself so I'm just going to give the whole boat a nice even coat of this to make sure that our actual paint job comes out looking even and clean once the boat is actually prepped to be painted I have to start thinking about what design I want to do in this case we're going to be doing black sides with metallic silver trim and belly so what i'm doing here is taping off everywhere that i want to be silver by the end goal so that i don't get a bunch of black paint on it now is that's going to be the color i start with so it's really basically just going around all the edges and corners that i don't want to hit with black at the moment and taping it off starting with the first coat of black paint here it's gonna go on kind of splotchy and light in the first place and then by the third or fourth coat it's gonna darken up and look very solid and uniformed moving onto the silver belly this metallic chrome color went on very very thick only needed about two or three coats to look uniform throughout the boat so that made it very easy for this color we also hit this with a clear coat after it was done as well and as you can see here it goes on very nicely just with a normal arcing spray so this part was pretty simple as opposed to the black which you can see is still sort of white there we had to paint first obviously because it's gonna be very hard to flip this boat over and paint the back of it once there's a big deck in there and things like that so the first spot on the boat that we're gonna be working on is the low floor in the center these beams are pre-cut to match the contour of the boat and they've got a nice big seam going through the middle so that they sit rigid on top of the seams of the boat the notches you see cut in the top are for these floor panels so the whole floor is going to be supported by two by twos that are notched to sit flush with in these support beams and we're going to go with four across the middle here and this is what's going to have our floor built up on top of it next is to add these little L brackets to the end of it I didn't feel that having the floor of the boat supporting the entire floor of the deck was going to be quite enough at least not for me to be comfortable with so I'm also employing sturdiness of the seats that came pre-made in the hull and I'm going to be pop riveting these L brackets into the sides of the seat to add some extra support so in the long run these four beams going across here are not only going to be screwed down into beams that are flush with the floor and supported by the boat itself but also the L brackets on the end are going to be pop riveted into the seats and it'll be a very very sturdy platform to start with now for the first supports on the deck you can see this straight aluminum beam I believe it's a one and a half by three inch hollow beam of aluminum we got these recycled for a pretty cheap price so we decided to use them and we pop riveted them into the seats as you can see here some of the pop rivets are cleaner than others just because it's pretty thick stuff leave it to Ohio to storm on us the whole time we're trying to work outside we move this project in pretty soon after starting so as you see here we have two of those beams now and they're gonna be the main framing for our front and middle deck we're gonna need a cross beam setup here so we're not another piece of this beam to go on top of the two front ones already installed and these are again gonna be pop riveted together now the lengths on the outside edges of this one they pulled down from pressure say from some of the denting on top of the deck they actually bind into the original cross beams and don't need a whole lot of extra support so leaving that little overhang on the ends actually turned out to be very sturdy we repeated this process to frame out where we want our deck to be with a couple of extra cross beams that came up with this design here so as you can see it all works together to be a pretty flush system of beams I also put down a little bit of maroon paint on the outside eye just above the floor to give it a little bit of a pop of color and now we're starting to cut deck pieces we're using 3/4 inch plywood here just tracing it out and cutting it to the contours of the boat as you can see we've already got a couple of pieces carpeted and a couple of pieces left to cut the carpet we're using is really cheap stuff you can find it at always pretty cheap by the square foot moving right along into the actual deck here we had some issues with moisture in the air obviously being very humid and stormy and a lot of our pieces of plywood ended up bowing on this after they were already carpeted so I'm going to just go through how we went to fix that because I think anybody building with plywood is gonna run into an issue of bowing or some type of warping as time goes on what we're basically doing is laying one end in the correct spot and then as we move backwards we're letting the screws do the work and pull the Warped edges down into the same level as the edge that we think is correct that's what you kind of see as time goes on through this piece here you can see it warping into straight lines and we coming flush with the actual floor support next to the side walls so that we're not tripping up over that top deck as we're stepping onto it and to hide these kind of ugly little L brackets that we made earlier on in the video so what this is is a very small piece of L frame aluminum and we're just pushing it up against where we think the wall would sit and screwing it down to the floor beams as shown here so this is gonna serve as some bottom support and then the top deck itself is going to serve as the top support for our wall and he's just gonna pop right in there for us like so and we're just gonna be putting some screws through these support beams behind it and the new L bracket that we just made this is the end result of that wall as you can see it looks very flush very natural there and now we've got our entire deck carpeted and cut to size so we'll give you a quick trip around the boat to see where we're at right now we also have some compartments up front that are ready to get containers put in to store tackle and terminal stuff for the book so these are the totes I'm going to be using for our storage this is a 17 gallon tough totes by Sterilite they're really basic in design that's why I like them because this is how we're going to be securing them in here we've got a wooden frame that is just basically screwed down into the aluminum framing and it's it's just slightly lower and these tough totes sit perfectly flush inside and then you're able to actually put the lid on on top because there's enough clearance between the lid and the frame that they'll still sit flush even with the totes in there so the next step is going to be getting some hinges put on these outside edges here in here and then getting handles to actually lift from here and here and then down here on the floor just in case we need access to the wiring I'm going to be putting a handle right about here and leaving this piece independent now we're going to get into some fun stuff and start talking about electronics so I wanted to get something reliable and full of features for this boat because I want to again be able to use it on multiple boats down the line as well so I purchased a Lawrence hook 25 5 inch display and this is what you get out of the box we're gonna do a little mini unboxing here so just stay tuned for this here is your transducer the mounting hardware and mount afore the screen itself the wiring kit and more mounting hardware for the transducer now as I said this is the first time I've used an electronic system of my own had to set it up by myself which is evidenced by the fact that the display screen has been upside down ever since I started the shots we're just gonna fix that real quick oh boy okay moving on we've got a min Kota Edge 55 pound thrust foot pedal trolling motor here purchased this a while ago when I first started thinking about building my boat out and this is gonna be fun to install as well as you can see the previous owners put quite a few excessive holes through the hull for some reason here I'm not quite sure what they're mounting but whatever they did ended up marring up a pretty big portion of the front of the boat we're gonna be covering that with a wooden deck just like the back decking same thickness and all and we're gonna be mounting our drilling motor mount up front just like so now we have carpeted that piece of deck and supported it with another aluminum beam as you can see here it's painted so it looks all nice and we've secured it down just with the same stainless screws this is the mounting hardware for the trolling motor we've already marked out all the holes to go through the mount itself and it's just going to be some basic bolts to try and distribute the weight as wide as possible and keep it very stable on the front of the book so I've got that nada we're gonna work on the mountain for the electronic screen this is a very simple one you just drill some pilot holes and run screws down through the bottom of the mountain and then this is actually an adjustable screen so I can either face it straight back towards me I'm sitting in the driver seat of the boat or I can make it face straight up at me if I'm standing overtop of it running the trolling motor some of these are both the unit's installed on the front of the boat as you can see they sit nicely together seamlessly I [Music] purchased a swivel seat for the back end and got lucky with how well the colors match not really a big deal if they match perfectly but it made me happy so I figured I'd mention it either way this is pretty much the finished product of the boat other than it needing cleaned out we're going to be moving into the big reveal towards the end of the video here [Music] [Music] so here is the big reveal on the finished product now one thing I didn't mention is the actual outboard which is a pretty big piece of this boat that I forgot to mention up until now this is a 20 horse tail hot suit long shaft now this boat is actually built for a short shaft but a long shaft is gonna do better to translate on to bigger and better boats in the future so I figured I would go with that as you can see my storage compartments here are filled with a bunch of terminal stuff to make the boat safe and legal and then my front compartment is the fun stuff being tackle and baits and things like that so a little bit of a spoiler alert for the next video I am in love with this motor it works great even with it being a long shaft on a boat that needs a short shaft it works perfect for this application alright so now that you've seen the process that we use to actually turn this into what it is now we're gonna have to trailer up we're gonna take it out to the water and see if we can catch a fish on it today's gonna be sort of a learning experience for me because one I've never run a foot pedal trolling motor before - I've never actually run side-scan or down imaging and three this is the first time I ever used this boat with hope we were running like a 9.9 before so it's quite a power increase and I'm hoping it's gonna run just fine it's both a little bit small for a 20 but worst-case scenario I just won't run it at full speed as I said in the previous part of the video I wanted to get a 20 to put it on the future boats if I had to instead of getting something just for this little guy I figured having one that can be used for multiple different boats down the line would have been smarter so that's what I did but anyways we're gonna hook her up and get out on the way [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Outdoor Tactics

Views: 69,450

Rating: 4.9284863 out of 5

Keywords: Outdoors, Fishing, DIY, Boat Build, Outdoorsman, Outdoor Life, Antique

Id: oqDPFLKYgGs

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 03 2019