April 11

We made some progress on the ol’ jon boat project last weekend. The weather in Lubbock has been crazy the last few weeks. It was 93 degrees on Sunday, and we had a massive cold front that moved through Tuesday night, causing a dust storm. We woke up to a half inch of snow Wednesday morning. There is a reason Lubbock won the Weather Channel’s most extreme weather city contest.

Before the boat was dusted with snow, we worked on sanding it and cleaning out a lot of the stubborn red West Texas dirt. We have used rotating sanders, hand sanders and SOS pads to sand down the aluminum and to remove the oxidation that has formed over most of the boat. Several rats have taken advantage of the Styrofoam over the years, building nests up in the bench seats. As you can imagine, this has left a less than desirable smell. We plan to use the existing compartments in the back part of the boat for storage, so we cut the aluminum with tin snips, chipped out the nasty Styrofoam, and sucked it out a shop vac.

We have gone back and forth on whether or not we remove the middle bench seat. I’ve seen arguments that this will comprise the stability of the boat, but I have also seen several modifications where it worked perfectly. Since we are hoping to do a lot of fly fishing out of the boat, the removal of the middle bench seat to make room for a potential casting deck or perhaps casting knee braces (like you would see in a drift boat) would be necessary. I came across a jon boat modification being done by a fly guide in the Austin area who had a clean method of removing the middle bench seat. He drilled a hole through the rivets, outside in, popped out the rivets, removed the seat, and used JB Weld and appropriately sized steel nuts and bolts to seal the holes back up.

So, that’s what we did.

It was a clean removal, and we still have the entire bench seat intact to use later down the road if we ever need to.

We continued sanding the inside of the boat down to prepare it for priming.

I then finished cutting out the compartments in the back of the boat. I used a recip saw and tin snips. It isn’t easy work.

I needed to remove the Styrofoam and nasty rats’ nests from the back bench. I knew they were still in there because I could smell them. So I cut a new compartment into the back bench. We will put a seat on the right side of this bench and I thought a compartment on the left side would do two things 1) Provide nice storage, and 2) Allow me to suck all of the Styrofoam and nests out of there more easily. I also cut a compartment that will go just below the chair. The chair we will likely use will be 15 inches wide, so I put the other smaller compartment based on that measurement. This also helped me get the yucky Styrofoam out of there. Once we get the compartments finished with closing doors and such, we will blow in more foam to provide flotation.

I also gave the boat another bath. You wouldn’t believe the amount of red dirt that still lives in the boat. I towel dried and it and began the primer process.

I went through four cans of self etching primer ($5.98 at Home Depot) before I finally had to stop for the day.

You can follow our #projectjonboat project on Instagram. Just follow @lindsayk12.