1436 Lowe modifications

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cwphoto

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Hello folks:

Just getting a start here on a modification to a 1436 I picked up at Sportsman's Warehouse. These are labeled under the Coleman brand, but are actually Lowe boats according to the title. They have these labeled at weighing 197 pounds, but no way-- more like 135 pounds. This is a super lightweight boat that hopefully won't get torn apart too quickly. On the plus side, since it is so lightweight it will allow for a bit more weight for my modification.

I used rigid foam insulation for the floor, which will be covered in FRP ( fiberglass reinforced panels). I beveled the edges to fit the support ribs, and also used a router to notch the bottom of the panels at the transition area where the gunwales meet the floor.

I'm covering the open area at the Stern in 3/8 inch exterior grade plywood, which will also be covered with the FPR. While I'm going to go ahead and put a deck in the front, I'm allowing a large removable panel just forward of the front bench seat, so a person can stand inside the decking area or rest their feet there.

My plan at this point is to also put the trolling motor battery upfront, but I can quickly see going overboard on weight. My modifications are going to include a movable steering console that will slide on the vertical section of the front bench seat, and a small windshield of some kind. Here in Alaska with 45 to 50° water temperatures, it can get mighty chilly traveling along at 20+ miles an hour, so a windshield is just about a must if a person doesn't want to freeze to death.

Here's a couple of photos of the start of the project. I'm using 1" x 1" x 0.125 of an inch aluminum angle, and 3/16 of an inch pop rivets. The shop unfortunately only had the rounded corner variety of the aluminum angle, so having to round off all the edges for fitting, which is definitely slowing me down. I was able to get 50 feet for $40, and one sheet of fiberglass reinforced panel was $34, and the 3/8 of an inch plywood was $24. Pop rivets are about five dollars for 50, so that's where I'm at so far in terms of expense.

I will update as I go along here. So far, this is taking way longer than I expected, but now that I've got my feet wet a little bit with the aluminum angle installation, it should move along a bit faster. I'm finding that nothing in the boat is square, parallel, symmetrical, etc. It's pretty much a custom build, and I bet most boats are this way. I suspect it really doesn't matter if your bench seat is a half-inch out of square, but when you're trying to cut plywood for a deck, it can be a real pain creating parallelograms.

More to come...
 

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Awesome to hear you're finally under weigh!!! Good luck.

You're better off with the 6061 structural angle rather than the cosmetics stuff...but yeah, it slows you down. A good ******* file makes short work of that edge work. Oh, and if you've got a face shield and a carbide (?) tipped circular saw blade it is the best thing out there for quickly dicing up the angle. I heated the house burning oak shipping pallets one winter and had the blade so that I could cut through the nails buried in the pallets.

Dunno if it helps, but if you take a box-cutter to those panels it makes short work of shaping them.

My boat is the same way with the uneven OEM construction (alumacraft) which of course you don't realize until you've cut your first piece of whatever and it doesn't fit. I thought it was just shoddy work on mine as no one else mentioned it before, but now you have me wondering. I was aware of this so when it came time to do the back of my boat I started marking center-lines and taking measurements relative to the one commonly aligned point and everything came out beautifully - my method revealed there was 1/8" variation from one side of the boat to the other in the layout of the seemingly uniform stiffening ribs which existed in the front too and threw off the level of my front deck initially.
 
The project came to a screeching halt as the weather changed. I ended up redoing the front deck. With quite a few of the boat mods I've seen, it's simply a matter of extending aluminum from the bench seat to another horizontal divider in the bow. With the Lowe 1436, the deck would be way too high or slope too much uphill, so some compromise was in order. Originally I was going for the same plane as the two bench seats, but the front deck must slope somewhat uphill, as the boat naturally slopes uphill. Again, some compromise is called for.

Anyway, I finished up the aluminum framing for the front deck. I made a removable hatch just forward of the front bench seat. This allows it to be removed if a person wants to sit down on the front bench seat, and have their legs sit on the floor. It also allows a person to stand on the floor for casting (more stable).

The cover can also be put in place, and then an extension post put into the seat flange support, and you can stand up as well. This is kind of the best of both worlds. I have a feeling the 1436 is going to be rather unstable, so wanted to cover the basis.

I was using 3/8 plywood which was both a blessing and a curse. 3/8 plywood is extremely difficult to get to lay flat. Even if it starts out flat, by the time you get some Thompson's water seal on it, it may warp. No problem if you are fastening it to a frame, but big problem if you want to make hatch covers. I resorted to attaching square aluminum to the bottom to help keep things flat, and even there I had some issues. Whether or not some magnetic catches will hold things down I don't know. I had this issue at both the bow and stern of the boat. At the stern, I'm just going to put a threaded knob through the plywood and into the aluminum. I will probably use a circ-clip on the threads so the knob can't fall out.

I've got a 6 gallon gas can that is just slightly too tall to fit under the deck, but this is actually okay as it will allow me to cut a 3 inch diameter hole for gas filling and venting without protruding more than about an 1/2 inch. There's not many 6 gallon cans that can fit back there.

I ended up with a 9.9 Mercury four stroke. Originally I was going to go with a 9.8, two stroke, but the combination of noise and smoke turned me off. I've seen plenty of videos where people talk about getting 20+ miles an hour with this combo, so fast enough for me. I like having the gear control in the throttle handle as well. So much easier to deal with. The 9.8 did not even have a safety lanyard!

Anyway, the boat is sitting with a cover on it until spring. I have to take the decking off to complete the flooring up front, so will be sure to take some photographs, and update this post then. I thought it was going to be a quick project, but it doesn't always work that way.

Best,

Troy
 

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