1970 Ouachita 16’ Jon

Hi all... I have been away for a really long time since I sold my Arkansas Traveler, but this weekend I picked up a 1970 Ouachita 1636 Jon. I also picked up a outboard to go with. I need to take all the paperwork down to TPWD to transfer everything over... hopefully it doesn’t take too long lol. I didn’t get a trailer so the will be the next thing on my radar.

Here is a picture when I went to pick up the Ouachita.


It has two seats, an old plywood floor, 2x12 seat bases, and a 2x12 front deck step. There is some damage to the front that I want to repair. I will need to straighten out the lines on starboard bow and find an aluminum repair shop to fab up a new bow plate. Got the boat home last night and tonight I started taking everything off so I can assess everything. First I had to take out 30 wood screws on the rear 2x12 seat base. Some of the screws were hidden, stripped, and others were snapped off in the 2x.... The front seat base was held in with 10+ lag bolts...it was kind of nuts... this was the front seat base after I took it off little easier than the rear but I have big holes in the aluminum now to deal with...



Here are the pictures of the boat with the wood removed and showing the bow damage.







I will probably re-do the transom and potentially add another brace. I won’t know if it’s really bad until I start looking a little closer.



The one thing I am able to keep!!! Seats were trash and the wood was trash.


Tomorrow I will pressure wash everything to see how it looks.

As far as my plans. I want to add some mid height decks in the front as to keep the seats so my daughter can still sit down in the boat. I want to add a deck in between the last two seats in the bottom of the boat. I want to frame the supports and hatches out of aluminum. Trying to figure out what decking to use... torn between the honeycomb decking or aluminum decking. I want to use decking lighter than wood to keep my weight down since the capacity of this boat is about 730#...

Wow, you really are bringing her back to life.

In that one pic I think you stuck the duplex nails in to show where the lag bolts were. Man oh man, what were they thinking

I hope you continue to post progress. I really look forward to following your project.

So I tried filling it up today to check for leaks... however about half way through my sawhorse the boat was sitting on started to sink... and it started raining right after I picked the boat up off the sawhorse...

Maybe will try some concrete pads to set the sawhorses on. From first glance it’s doesn't look like there were any leaks... fingers crossed!

Congrats on the new boat! Looks like a nice hull for a build project. Looking forward to watching it progress, so keep us updated!