JON BOAT to SALTWATER SKIFF Build Walkthrough | 212hrs of Work

what's up y'all brett barley here and for those of you that know me you know i've had a john boat for a few years now i fish in it it's part of what i do surf fish take family out whatever and i've always wanted to customize it it was just a standard john boat there was kind of some decking on there from the guy that i bought it from for bass fishing it was totally unideal for salt water and i only fish in the salt water and so i wanted to customize it and make it into a flat spoke a skiff whatever you want to call it a john's gift and so that's what this video is this winter i stripped it down i rebuilt it into my own customized john skiff it's not really john boat anymore so we're gonna break down all the details of how i built it what i did a time lapse of the whole thing and how much i'm enjoying it [Music] so [Music] so as i mentioned got this boat back in 2019 it's a 1436 tracker topper when i was hunting for it i was mainly looking for a good motor and while i was looking this deal came up it was a killer deal it had a deck it came with a trolling motor the engine is in 2016 ran great and so no-brainer i was sold and i got on the water that year fished all last season when i got it it was covered in carpet and built the decks were built with salt-treated plywood the carpet was super gross when you fished there's just slime everywhere and it was to get it out you would like i'd scrub it with soap but then the bubbles and soap wouldn't come out of the carpet and so it was kind of a nightmare the salt treated plywood held water and so it was so heavy so i had this heavy boat that wasn't utilized for the space like there was no hatches i couldn't put anything anywhere it was just on the deck so i decided to customize it for years i've been following guys who customized john boats namely this guy anthony jones he's got a youtube channel and instagram the guy does insane work he built a top gun john bow what he called it and he decked it out with a lot of the things that i decked this out with as far as the latches and hatches and the lights and whatnot i took this thing is completely inspired by him but with my own twist the endeavor started this winter when i sprained my ankle and i all of a sudden had a couple months to get to work so the first thing i did was dive into videos a lot of anthony's videos just to see what i needed supply-wise as far as hardware wood accessories and start making a plan of how i wanted to lay it out and i kind of had an idea based off of fishing out of it for the last two years but it you know i planned it drew it out wrote everything down and then went to home depot and went to the local hardware store got some supplies and got ready but the very first thing i had to do was strip the whole thing down so my son and i got started i set up a gopro in the garage we were gonna go start to finish this whole process we ripped everything out of the boat i stripped it down to the bare john bow how you would buy it and then i started cutting out hatches and taking foam out of the seats to be able to put compartments where i'd be able to hold stuff now the foam comes in these boats as a safety precaution i will say as i built it back i put foam back in it but i put it in like i packed it around all the compartments so that i could use the space instead of it just being dead space also i fish in super shallow water pretty much you're never with farther than a couple hundred yards from a knee-deep shoal so if there was ever any issues you're going to get to somewhere safe yeah so i took the foam out made the hatches and then started sanding it which sanding was my absolute least favorite thing but because the boat had had salt treated wood in it there were spots that were corroding there was gunk everywhere and i figured if i'm going to build this thing back and seal it all up i need to sand every square inch and that's what i did and it took me forever and it was horrible and i plan on never sanding a whole john boat ever again because all the rivets and the cracks and crevices and it just was awful but needed to be done and then i spray painted it with a base coat primer and then painted over it with oil based after that next came the framing i started framing from the bow to the stern worked on the front deck up there with a light bar hatch that i was you know wanted to have a custom light bar for fishing at night and then worked on this middle bench and worked on the back bench and then i had to replace part of the stern for the motor and i used a piece of hardwood for that painted it sealed it all up and once it was framed i started painting everything and then two-part epoxy paint my thing is i wanted to seal every piece of wood because if water does get in somewhere i don't want it to start rotting it i didn't use salt treated wood i wanted to keep it light i used three quarter board i used two by twos and kept it as thin and light as possible but structurally sound using these l brackets and whatnot so it's super sturdy while i was waiting for the two-part epoxy to dry on all the framing i took the hull flipped it over and sprayed the entire thing with this uh aluminum boat paint gunmetal gray came out or battleship gray whatever it's gray and it came out sick except it did not adhere very well it is horrible paint for me i sanded the whole thing and and wiped the whole thing down before i paint it it was i did everything by the book and it just it's chipping off and peeling in places so what you're seeing is you know i finished this boat two months ago and i wish i would have filmed it then because it was prettier but really this is a more real-life scenario of what happened i didn't make it perfect it's not perfect paint's chipping everywhere but it's a john boat so whatever i would not use that paint again i think it's called a luma hawk or something i didn't have good luck with it um anthony jones used it on his and had good luck maybe maybe i just didn't sand it with the right grit i don't know but it didn't work for me but after i did that i put it back in the garage and i went to assembling all of the framing i had laid it out and marked everything so that as i you know because once i painted it i didn't know what piece was what but i laid it out on pieces of plywood and labeled it so that when i went to put it back together i just went in order and everything went smooth and after it was assembled and i went to start putting building the hatches and whatnot i filled every crevice with foam as i was putting stuff in that way it won dampened sound so that when water slaps it you don't get like there's no hull slap for virtually no hull slap you john boats are typically loud the front of this bow is so quiet because of all the foam i packed in there it made everything tight she's seaworthy after that i began running wires through the entire boat i ran all the main wires and marked out where i planned on having lights where i needed to get the trolling motor run the wire for the motor all these things anchor light nav lights basically mapped the whole thing out and pulled all the wires first being that i know nothing about electrical work i was constantly watching youtube videos making sure i did it right and did a ton of testing with each basically with every single light to make sure it worked because i didn't want to go to like heat shrinking and connecting all these wires and them not work or short something or create a fire i don't know so i did it very slowly very tediously and with a lot of help from youtube but made it happen then once all the wires were run i built the housing for where they were all going to go to now i kept it kind of tight i built it as big as i could but as small as i could at the same time because i wanted to be able to put my rods here and hold them in that this little setup i have and so i i needed it to stay low enough that the reels wouldn't hit but i needed it high enough to be able to fit all the wires and switches in there and then a fuse box up here i definitely made it hard on myself by making it so small but it ended up working out and it came out rad i'm super pumped on it it uh it's like that and um the hatches are like my favorite things that i did and once that was done and the framing's done it was time to do the flooring and start framing that out and getting it ready for paint underneath all the flooring is this three quarter inch foam that i was able to fit in all the grooves between the ribs of the boat one that added dampening and two it helps support the floor without having to add wood i wanted to keep it light so i used three quarter inch plywood for the floor that was the only place where i used thick plywood because there's nothing else there besides that in the foam after that i came in and sanded the hatches bonded all the hatches and then started epoxying them and the floor that way with the hatch is bonded and epoxied over them it gives you like a completely seamless look it looks so good and i'm happy with how it came out so after all that had the epoxy i came back with white oil-based paint and that was my first base coat that was going to be the top coat of this boat once i got to that stage it was time to hook up the electronics for the final time i had ran the wires i had done tests but now it's time to hook them all up so i got waterproof connectors that heat shrinked and then i would put hate shrink tube over that so they're all completely sealed and i would just go one at a time really slow testing the connections and making sure everything worked through the fuse box that i had for blue sea systems and it just it took me a long time again i don't know wiring i don't understand electrical so i had to do it real slow to make sure i did it right but i have a battery kill switch under the middle seat here where the battery is we did nav lights anchor light hatch lights then my camera fell while i'm doing all this wiring my camera my gopro that had been there for like two months fell over and actually maybe three months and so i got it back up and unfortunately i messed up the time lapse but we pressed on and then i moved into the deck lights and these deck lights were a nightmare these tiny tiny led strips i don't know why i got the short ones and then i use these tiny little plastic clips and uh 3m 4200 and put it all together and it was like the messiest most annoying thing i was like laying on my back and the floor of this trying to put it together it worked it worked but man it took me forever just to do three strips of lights the framing's done the electrical's done the flooring's done it was time to come back in for the decking i used 3 8 inch plywood for the deck and i used cardboard to make templates so that i could get all the cutouts right around the hatches and whatnot it was a lot of measuring a lot of tracing i'd cut the cardboard with x-acto knives and lay it out make sure it was right cut the plywood a little big and then kind of trim it from there to make sure i got that perfect fit started in the front worked my way back kind of that was kind of my theme i would always start up there and work my way back with each thing like each stage i did then i built out the hatch doors and i will say i kind of skimped out i meant to uh i don't know if you can see right here i meant to put another piece of plywood here to sturdy it up so like the grain on this is running this way i should have put another one here and i still could or the grain's running this way to kind of keep that from from warping but um did the hatches and then came in and bonded all these edges on where the plywood met the framing to give it that seamless look got to sand in and it was moving along i was getting that much closer after i did that i came in and epoxied all the decking epoxied around the framing and made it all look seamless and began working on the trolling motor mount and the trolling motor mount um i had my dad had some hardwood laying around that i used i think it's walnut maybe it just was laying in his his shed we took that and i framed it out and measured my trolling motor and built it all based off of my transom mount trolling motor so i could mount it up on the front once the trolling motor mount was done it was time to work on the fuse panel and the switch panel and this whole electrical box here because that was the stage i was at and it was kind of something i put off to the last minute i guess it was kind of one of the last steps anyway but i was also really nervous about doing it wrong what i did was i took the switches i had i took some plexiglass and i did a ton of math to figure out how to map it out and fit it all evenly in a small concise space so that it wouldn't be so low that on the floor it got water but it would fit and it honestly came out awesome that i'm like most proud of that maybe because it just was like it felt so technical for what i was doing and once that was done like the fuse box was actually kind of simple and i began wiring it all together for the final time and that night i think i stayed up till three in the morning just sitting there at the edge just connecting everything um watching youtube videos again on how to run the wires so that the switches would light up when you used them and it would turn everything on and off the correct way and not i just wiring is pretty wild and it was cool to learn and now that i kind of understand it um you know it's not scary so once all the wiring was done it was time for the final paint job but first i came in with 4200 and hit every single seam every seam where the hatches met the deck where the deck met the hull everything hit it with 4200 to make it seamless and came in with the oil-based paint in the spray gun and sprayed everything because i didn't see anywhere on the 4200 that said i couldn't paint it but apparently you can't and so a couple days went by it didn't cure a week goes by never cured it for like three or four days it kept curing a little bit and it got to a point where it just stayed tacky so i came in with acetone and wiped every single crack of this boat and got it all the tacky paint off i came back i had a bunch of suggestions from people to come back with primer and then paint over it so i primed it that dried then painted it with the oil base didn't cure again didn't cure again and so then i went last resort and someone told me to try using talcum powder or baby powder to dry it up so i wiped the whole thing in talcum powder kind of dried it up and i moved on because i just it was june we were june at this point and i was still working on the boat and it was time to get on the water and there was unfortunately that was one of the last things i needed to do and one of the like most important cosmetic things and i messed it up but i didn't know and i worked around it and honestly now like since everything's dried and i've used it you would never know i had a problem so it's kind of a bummer i didn't just do that the first time that it didn't cure but i didn't know so big learning experience there once the 4200 oil-based paint blunder was solved it was time to come in and do the final install on the hardware i worked on the light bar first put the light bar in wired it i saved that kind of for last i have some struts up there installed the hinges installed the latches and that was my first compartment i did to kind of run through the whole process and figure it out i did the front deck compartment and then from there i went to the hatches and the seats i came in and did all the hinges all the latches and then took it all off and painted it again to seal it and put it all back on then i was getting pretty much to the end i started doing the sea deck and a huge shout out to sea deck for supplying the sea deck for this this stuff is insane i'd always dreamt of having a boat with it on it and uh compared to the carpet it is night and day it cleans up amazing i've actually i got rust all over it here these seats are old they came with the boat they're rusty whatever and i got rust all over it i've gotten blood in it you know marsh mud scrubs right out it actually if you use this deck magic that they have you know you you hose it all down you squirt the deck magic on it you scrub it on the dirty spots let it sit five minutes spray it off it's like brand new but anyway to do the sea deck i used cardboard and did templates again just like i did the flooring and the decks with the plywood and it came out insane it was a process i think it took me a day and a half straight of just focusing on the c deck but i just wanted it right and it's so comfortable to fish on and i absolutely love it plus it looks so good we got gray on the outside white top coat with dark gray sea deck and it just accents it amazing it's beautiful i love the way this boat came out and i used the extra along the panels on the inside here to hide the wires that run up and down the boat and just to add like you know more cushion more dampening for sound and whatnot yeah it came out killer after that the boat was done it was time to put the accessories back on put the seats on put the rod holder on put the lowrance fish finder on um put the trolling motor back on which the trolling motor's not on there now because it broke wasn't prepared for that to happen this year thought i'd get another year out of it but it was a freshwater trolling motor when i got it from the guy i bought the boat from it made it almost three full season so i can't complain there but right now i don't have that and uh you know the mounts for the push-pull put the motor on it was ready to fish and and i was done four months i was done this was a project i'd always wanted to do since i got this boat it was exciting to to dive in and and figure it out i've never worked on a boat i had no idea what i was getting myself into and in all honesty i'm just like super ocd and pay a lot of attention to detail so like i made things take longer because i wanted to do it right but it is done now and i am stoked back on the water with the family with my friends by myself catching fish you know i got the compartment for tackle got a compartment back here for all of like you know extra prop tools and whatnot uh rope in this back hatch we got you know the gas tank the bilge pump which i i fabricated to go through the hole because i didn't want a hose coming over and then you know anchor whatnot there's two compartments here for whoever i'm taking along with me i'll normally keep my lunch in one of them i got a hatch underneath of me i can keep you know clothes camera gear whatever the front compartment's huge i can fit my pelican case with my drone in it towels food cooler with the kids for whatever and then we got the hatch for the battery we got the light bar like i got all these switches to turn lights on which i i'll show you once it's light out or dark out and uh i couldn't be more stoked that i built a boat um i'm just going to touch on a couple things that i fell short on one the paint on the outside that didn't go well i explained that already the hatches are not waterproof i i thought i bought this like window gasket from uh the hardware store and it goes all around them and it seals and it keeps water out but i bought cheap latches or 13 latches which i think is expensive but that's the cheapest ones i could find they're slam latches what i've learned is that slam latches aren't waterproof to get waterproof ones it's like 80 bucks a latch for the latches i needed twist ones so that they would be waterproof so those kind of need replaced because literally water just pours in through them and then the gaskets work but right around the rim water sits so when you open it it falls in i need to put just drill holes in the lip of the hatch so that it drains but really i was just like trying to keep everything low profile and thin and light and then i was trying to get on the water so i kind of bypassed that i'm realizing now it's kind of become annoying i should have fixed that you know when i had the chance but that'll be something i'll just deal with for now and maybe i'll work on this winter uh but it's really not a big deal i just i just can't have water like pouring onto the hatches whenever we got caught in the rain the other day the hatch is all filled up so i had to pump them out and dry them and whatever i'm a surfer not a boat builder so i had to learn the hard way i guess i knew i needed to make them waterproof and i just thought that i could do the bare minimum and it would work yeah i mean honestly those are the only things like the whole paint and the hatches were my biggest blunders i'm so happy with how it came out like i i didn't know what i was doing and thanks to anthony jones for the inspiration and all the tutorials on his youtube channel if you guys want to do something like this check out his youtube channel because that's what i did i followed most of his steps and then kind of like did my own thing to to fit it to my own uh liking but um yeah i'm going to just link his channel in the description because this boat would not have happened like it did without him without the lights and the way it did um just huge thanks to him for for being the man and uploading all those videos and inspiring people yeah i don't even know him so for the record i don't know i just follow him i'm like a fan of his i guess and um yeah if if you want to do something like that check them out i think that's about it y'all this is it this is the boat catch some fish make some memories and take you all along for the ride so stoked to finally break this down for you guys sorry it's been a while like i if i'd had done this when i finished it this would have all looked prettier but this is real life i didn't make a perfect boat so i'm not going to show you a perfect boat um but for a surfer i don't think i did too bad so i'm stoked cost wise just before i let you go my most expensive things were paint the the oil based and the epoxy paint and hardware and the stainless steel screws the stainless steel latches stainless steel hinges that was all the most expensive yeah took me 212 hours 212 hours to build a boat and i think if i did another one it'd probably take me half the time because now i know what i'm doing there was just so much time spent sitting there staring at it wondering how to do it and uh yeah i'd just encourage anyone that wants to try a big project don't be scared just take your time do your research if if you want to do it you can do it even if you don't have a clue how to um you can make it happen just might take you longer but anyway i'll let you guys go hope you guys love the boat doesn't have a name probably not gonna name it it's only 14 feet but yeah see you all out on the water thanks for tuning in have a good one y'all one more time just for laughs peace [Music] the drum dude

Channel: Brett Barley

Views: 102,018

Keywords: Brett Barley, Cape Hatteras, NC, North Carolina, Outer Banks, OBX, Buxton, Avon, Rodanthe, Frisco, Hatteras, Hatteras Island, Fishing, Surfing, Red Drum, Cobia, Mahi-Mahi, Top Water Blowup, Top Water, vlog, series, vlog series, vlogging, east coast vlog, east coast vlogging, web series, east coast series, Flounder, Inshore Fishing, Nearshore Fishing, Offshore Fishing, bull red drum, kayak fishing, kayak, big red drum, drum, nature, 1fish2fish, speckled trout, puppy drum, sight fishing

Id: G3iQsHm99oc

Length: 24min 29sec (1469 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021