Move seat on aluminum boat

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Is there a reason for repositioning the bench seat back 10"? If you move the bench back, you'd have to compensate for the hull being wider than the original location.
 
zero, yes, it is mighty tight for the person sitting in the front seat; legs and feet are kind of bound up in the sharp V shape. Middle seat is too close to rear seat to be used for fishing with two people. If the front seat was back some, it would be about perfect, and still have plenty of room between middle and front.

This boat has been in family since 1957; man, the fish that have been caught in this thing! That's why I am so interested in making it a little more fishable - it means a lot to me.
 
It looks to me like your best bet would be to get a new piece of aluminum, and find someone with a brake to form it. Seats on those are generally .063 - .080 aluminum, most any shop with a press brake or apron brake should be able to make that simple shape. You would probably have to bend the flanges on the end by yourself, but in .063 material, that should be no issue - you just need a table, a couple clamps, and some ingenuity.
 
Remove the seat. Spilt it right down the center useing a jig saw or other reciprocating saw. Once you have done this you can create wood replacement. Then use the two halves of the original bench as end caps and remount the bench. Attach the ends of the original to the wood and then reinstal. them you can can cover it with some carpet.

I have seen this done before and it turned out well and as cheap.
 
After reading it a second time, Nevil sounds like his is a good idea. There a all kinds of ways to refab the seat back together in the middle. I was thinking of making two rectangle frames out of aluminum tubing the size of each end of the seat. Cutting each piece to length but instead of attaching to each other, attach them to the hull from the outside with pop rivits. Then cover the frame with aluminum plate and attach the seat back to that.
 
Thanks, guys. Nevil, I think you have the best and easiest idea for my move. I think I will leave the present rivets in place and use a small metal cutting hole saw just the size larger than rivets and try to gently cut around the metal away from the rivets. There are 5 rivets on each side, and one of them is already broken loose. I will have to be careful to stop cutting as soon as I get through the seat, but I think I can manage.

Don't know when I will get to it, but at least, I think I know how to proceed. Thanks again! And, still open to ideas...
 
I think you'll be better off grinding off the rivets, and replacing them. Take a grinder with flap disk, and grind the inside flush, then knock the remainder out with a hammer and pin punch.

The hole saw idea seems to have too much room for error for my liking.
 
+1 What bassboy1 said. You've got a good chance of dinging your boat up with the hole saw. Not that hard nor expensive to get the few hand tools you'll need to set those few rivets.
 
Take a peek through my resto project, linked in my sig line. There's a post in there with lots of links related to rivets.
 
Man, Dave, what a project!! I love it! Makes mine seem piddling for sure, but inspires me to try more. I have been reading your posts, and just got to the rivet discussion when I had to take a break from reading! Well, suffice it to say, now I really want to get 'er done. If I were home in GA, I would want to come on up to Jefferson to be your gofer. You are about hour and half from my house. Ok, as I get time, I'll go back to reading your project; all I know now is that motor has good compression, boat is cleaned up good, and you were just starting to discuss rivets; that's where I stopped. Like a mystery novel!
 

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