Here I Go: 70's 18x48 Ouachita Rebuild

Hello everyone. I finally signed up on TinBoats.net after lurking around for a while. You guys inspired me to go out and tackle my own project. Thanks to everyone for the great advice and photos.

I have been looking for something big enough for my three boys and I for duck hunting, bass, and inshore flounder gigging. I'm pretty sure I found it! The boat is solid but the trailer is a real mess. I'm heading down to Bass Pro Shops later this week to pick up a camo 25 HP Mercury 4 stroke outboard along with seats, carpet, trolling motor, etc... Also priming, painting, rewiring, and replacing hubs and tires on trailer.

Here is the boat when I got it home. I'm just glad the trailer did not fly apart between Lexington and Winston-Salem, NC.


Here are a few more pics with the paint stripped and the base green paint applied. I will be putting on a camo pattern to match my new motor... more pics to follow later!

The boat looks nice. What are you going to do to the trailer?

Trailer has had the rust sanded or blasted off, and now has one coat of 'rusty metal' primer. I have pulled off the wheels, hubs, old wench, wiring, and jack stand. Just about all my replacement parts for the trailer are coming from Northern Tool - what a cool store!

I'm going to try and get the wheels sanded, primed, and painted this week. I'm waiting on my camo paint stencil kit to arrive from Cabellas.

Welcome to the site!

Good work So far!!!!!

Keep the pics coming!

Welcome to the site! Very nice boat... reminds me of Codeman's project.

Trailer work tonight! I had my boys removing rust from the bottom of the trailer and the steel wheels. I hope to get the trailer and wheels painted this week so I have time to work on the boat this weekend!



My youngest son is searching for rust before we add more primer...

Nice work!.. Good idea by putting the kids to work!.. When mine get older, i'll do that too, LOL!! :lol:

Ha! Had my buddy come over to help me strip my boat and his son wanted to help us out. You'd be amazed at the amount of noise an 8yr old can make with a 1" paint scraper. He didn't get much done, but definitly had fun hangin' out with the guys in the garage

what is flounder gigging?

danmyersmn, Flounder gigging is when you use a boat to move thru shallow salt flats in search of flounder trying to hide,, you use a metal 4 or 5 prong gig to impale the flounder, We have a size limit here in N.C. so you have to judge your fish pretty careful before you gig him. Same thing with frog gigging, frogs are just harder to hit. :LOL2:

Here is a pretty good video of Flounder gigging, complete with dramatic movie music!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLtSm5Y6-c8

I bought a Stencil pattern through Cabellas to camo my boat. It is the Advantage Max 4D camo pattern and the stencil is made by a company called Styx River. All in all it turned out really nice, but I did have to make an additional run to Lowes to get more paint. The toughest part was getting the leaves applied correctly - the ridges on the side of the boat caused me to hold the pattern with my hands. When I finished my hands had a weird camo color. :roll:

Base Sand Coat for Camo:


Shadow Applications:




Adding Cattails and Leaves...




Camo Finished!

I managed to pull the old hubs off my trailer and just got some new tires put on the wheels. I went to Northern Tool today to get hubs, bearing buddies, and a grease gun... I then realized that I didn't know what the heck I was doing. The people at Northern helped me get the right sizes, but I was not feeling so confident about getting everything back together. (I was always get great help at Northern - maybe its because I'm wearing a suit and looking clueless).

This video on TinBoats was extremely helpful: https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=9000

I'll try to knock out the wheels/hubs tonight so I can replace the carpet on the bunks and rewire the trailer!

The paint job turned out awesome! Looks great!

WebMonkey54 said:

Here is a pretty good video of Flounder gigging, complete with dramatic movie music!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLtSm5Y6-c8

Click to expand...

Looks like it could be fun.

Hubs and Wheels on! It would have taken a lot less time if I had not loaded the grease gun backwards..

The bearing buddies worked very well, except one of them did not want to release its nipple from my grease gun. I ended up pulling so hard that the bearing buddy came apart. Its probably not the bearing buddy - its probaby the operator of the grease gun..

WebMonkey54 said:

Hubs and Wheels on! It would have taken a lot less time if I had not loaded the grease gun backwards..

The bearing buddies worked very well, except one of them did not want to release its nipple from my grease gun. I ended up pulling so hard that the bearing buddy came apart. Its probably not the bearing buddy - its probaby the operator of the grease gun..

Click to expand...

Actually It might not be the operator, I got a pair of them from Walmart Last summer, Both Sides stuck . I had to pry them off, Took them back, and went to Auto Zone and got a pair, No more problem!!

I got some neighborhood kids to help me and my boys get the boat on the trailer. It is very long!

I also discovered how much a new 25hp motor weighs. Looks like I will need to raise and reinforce my transom.. More pics of that later!

ctl+alt+D, greatness!

There's no place like 127.0.0.1

Thanks! License plate was CODEMNKY until divorce caused a personal reboot last year. System seems to be running just fine now.