Lowe Angler A1257 Storage Mod

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nosticks

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Sep 18, 2011
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Location
Tampa, Fl.
I bought a new Lowe Angler A1257. A great little boat, but it needed a few things. Other than seats, cup and rod holders, the main issue was where to store things like anchor and line, dock lines, launch lines, and other stuff you didn’t need to trip over every time you moved about.

I decided to deck over the front seat area up to including the bow. This gave me a good area to put those things, easy access, and you really didn’t lose the seating area.

The first thing was to pattern the area, and a very easy way to do that is with lattice strips and a hot melt glue gun. You just need a fixed reference point and from there everything is formed. I choose the centerline of the seat. The bow area from the seat forward is the same on both sides of the center line so I only needed to pattern one side. The back of the seat area was the second pattern.
I laid the patterns out on 1/2” external grade good one side plywood (not pressure treated). Once the patterns were transferred and cut out, I began the fitting process. I fabricated some supports from 1/16” x 1” aluminum angle stock. I got the angle to bend them by using a bevel. Cut and drilled, I scribed the install points and used aluminum pop rivets to install to the hull and stiffeners. The original seat provided the bulk of the support for the decking.

The plywood decking was positioned and the holes drilled oversize. I used #8 machine screws with nyloc nuts so I drilled ¼” holes. I mixed up some resin and with a few throw away brushes, I coated the plywood top, edges, bottom, and filled the ¼” drilled holes with the resin. After it cured, next day I drilled the right size holes for the #8 fasteners right in the center of the resin filled holes. That way there were no holes into the plywood that would allow water to penetrate.

Prior to installing the plywood, I laid the carpet out and used the plywood as a pattern, leaving ½” extra all around I trimmed it to fit and allow it to be rolled over and tucked in the edges. I laid on the glue and set the carpet, rolling the edges under by using a carpet tool to tuck the edges in place. A slight trim here and there and a latch for the hatch and the job is done.


A1257pattern1.jpg

A1257pattern2.jpg

A1257bulkhead.jpg

A1257decking.jpg

A1257done.jpg
 

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