dahogman 1974 Starcraft rebuild

Hey there dahogman.

even though this site is about pontoons I"m proud to see you doing this rebuild.

I have been looking for a 15 to 16 foot boat to rebuild.

I have found two, just waiting on the owners to give me a price.

Keep us posted and pictures.

Thanks, dahogman

Here are some pics of the boat.  It isn"t great but I think its ok for a fishing boat.

lookin" good there dahogman.

to bad the stringers are metal, I can"t see pictures of there rebuild.

found a third boat today but the guy wants $750 for it and it needs a rebuild.

I got the transom in today.  I made it with 3/4 Treated Marine plywood from www.Pontoonstuff.com  I measured and measured and measured and then cut it out with a jigsaw.  I then glued and screwed it.  I then applied 2 coats of resin to each side and 4 coats of resin to the edges.  I let the transom cure in my Garage pretty much all summer.  I put transom in boat and then lowered front of boat until the transom was plumb, I then leveled boat side to side on the trailer.  I checked everything twice and started drilling the holes for the mounting bolts.  I got lucky and hit all eight of the existing thru hull holes for the transom.  I hit them dead solid perfect the first time, I was more than amazed that I could do this on a 35 year old boat.  I decided to call it a day after I got the bolts all in and tight, no sense ruining a good day.

I can"t believe it myself.  I"m not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

Got started on the floor today.  I got the floor fitted and everything went pretty well.  I made tabs to put on the bottom of the decking to hold the stringers plumb.  The stringers are held in place by the tabs until I get the screws in them.  If you don"t use the tabs the stringers will tend to bend over from the weight of the decking.  They lose their strength when bent over, they should be plumb for maximum strength.  I measured every 5 inches and transferred measurements to cardboard.  I then connected the dots for the outline of my floor.  The bow area was the toughest as I had a lot of ribs to go around.  I used a lid from a Spaghetti sauce bottle as a pattern for the cutouts for the ribs.  I now need to put in console and storage compartments so I can layout the seat bases.  Then I take everything out and put the carpet on.  I"m going to take decking out and put carpet on each piece separately.  This will make any type of maintenance or repairs easier as each piece will be able to be removed separately.  The decking is the Marine plywood sold by Pontoonstuff, great stuff.

I took the bow section out to finish it before laying out the floor plan.  You can see on the cardboard where I laid out a grid.  I got a old piece of cardboard and squared it up as best I could.  I then cut it to the same width as the widest part of the section I was plotting out.  I then found the center point and drew a line front to back on center.  I then laid out lines every 10 inches side to side.  I then measured side to side every 10 inches in the boat, this is how far the ribs are apart on center.  I transferred those measurements to cardboard.  I made sure the halfway point on each measurement fell on the center line thus keeping both sides equal.  I used the lid from a big bottle to form my cutouts where the ribs would protrude from under the floor.  I cut the final measurements out of the cardboard and put it in the boat.  I then used a marker to make final adjustments to cardboard.  I pounded the cardboard with a rubber mallet on the stringers.  This left an impression in the cardboard so I would know where they were.  I made my final cuts in the cardboard and then put it on my plywood and traced around it with a marker.  I cut the plywood out with my jigsaw and test fitted it in the boat.  I used some old aluminium I had from some door slides to make some braces for under the very front where there are no stringers in the boat.  I made two 12 inch braces and screwed and glued them on the bottom using all purpose water proof adhesive and stainless steel screws.  Probably not the best way to do it but I got it really close.