Re: Your advice on investing in a small Aluminum Utility style boat manufacturer.
@ BF, my friend had a loose rivet and he got me to hold a hammer with a big head on it up to the one side of the rivet on the inside of the boat. I was inside the boat, boat was on the trailer. He took another large (heavy) hammer and tapped the rivet on the other side. He gave it some good whacks. My hammer was popping up off the bottom of the hull on the inside and i had to reposition it each 'tap'. Maybe that would help the leaky rivets next time you have some buddies coming up to the cottage. I like the idea of the storage compartment at the rear seat. Even if you took that other 25% of the floatation foam you used in that rear seat and found a way to stuff it into the other seats...then it wouldn't even cost anything on the cargo capacity. That's another great suggestion. I just love the part of the country your cabin is in, the fishing there is just spectacular and the sunsets, boy, those are incredible, nothing like them here out west. You are very lucky to have property out that way and it's always surprised me why so many other people don't hop on a flight to winterpeg and make the drive.
@ esobofh, Yes it certainly stands to reason that a welded hull at least starts with no holes in it, and granted it would probably take a nice whack against the more rigid area of the weld to make it crack. The 'weld where it's needed' is a nice idea, I guess if the welder is already turned on and welding anyway...why stop at the hull...might as well weld the seats on and everything. I guess the welding might be automatable too, meaning less manpower required to make a boat and potentially more profitable in the long run. One of my inhibitions about this type of manufacturing business is that it could be taken to mexico where labor is cheaper....and then this guy would be out of luck. He tells me that's not really going to happen in the boat business because of the cost to transport such a volumnous product such as a boat chews up the extra money saved in labour. I'm not sure how qaulified he is to make that statement because after all, he's a small time operation out of the shop on his land. It's a reasonable comment though, I mean, how many boats would fit in rail car? Not many! So transport must just be killing these guys. Just to check prices I called the crestliner dealer in my area, he had a 16 foot open aluminum style boat like the ones were talking about, rated for a 20 hp max (that's rediculously low for a 16 foot isn't it?), and they want 4500 cdn for it. I was appaled at the price, when i asked him why the 20 hp max rating he said it was because the boat was made out of thin aluminum. 4500 seems like a very steep price tag, but then again, i have no idea how far they are shipping. As far as I know crestliners are made in the usa so that's a fair ways to ship something as big as a boat.
@ Bubba, if your still following this thread, do you know if the mandate for the welded hull only in your state of MO is for any size of aluminum boat or boats of a certain size and weight? That's a good tidbit of knowlege and next time I see a fish and wildlife ranger on our ponds up in Canada I will have a close look to see which style they are driving!
Cheers guys, Ryan.
