Re: 12 ft aluminum Sears Gamefisher
One of my big reasons for doing this thread was to pay it forward. I got a lot of great ideas from this site. One of the the things I wanted to share was how little money you have to spend to retore a little boat.
The first thing a did was clean the boat with a friends preasure washer. I dryed it out and started sanding with a palm sander. This took about 2 nights to do. Maybe 5 or 6 hours. Not fun but needed to be done. Next I filled the boat up with water and crawled under the trailer to look for leaks. Ouch.... About 12 to 15 of them. I think this thing had hit everything but the daily double. I marked them with a black sharpie on the outside and then in the inside when I drained it. I did a bunch of looking into how to stop leaking rivits. I asked a guy at work "Mr.Kill" who is smart as they come. He turned me onto an epoxy made by locktite for aluminum. It costed about $4.00 at the Depot. I decided at that price to give it a try. I applied it to the marked spots and gave it a night to set up. The next day I put the water to it and couldnt believe how well it worked.
Stage 2 was deciding how I wanted to paint the boat. I know it didnt need to make it look new. I just wanted protection against for what I was using it for. I went to walmart and bought some self etching primer made by Rustolium(note: its not with normal primer. Look in the Automotive bondo stuff). I used about 6 cans at $4.00 apiece to do the inside and the top part of the outside. After priming II came across some Herculies Truck bedliner on sale for $60.00. I have read mixed reviews on putting this on your boat but decided to try it because I thought it would be extra protection against leaks. I put 2 coats of that on just above the rivit line on the boat. It was really easy to work with. I let that set up and started taping that boat off to paint. Again I didnt want to spend a lot on paint so looked around and found a True Value hardware store having a grand opening sale. They had spray paint on sale for .99 cents a can. I bought like 15 cans
of white and maroon. I painted the inside white to keep it cool on hot summer days. And the Maroon for the outside top half. Painting went well but just took a lot of coats. I am posting pics below.
