"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On 19 Dec 2006 04:16:59 -0800, "garcam" wrote:

I pulled the rotten wood decking out of my jon boat, which I recently
purchased, and noticed that the 3 center supports are chacked through
the middle. Someone put 2 pieces of aluminum channel across the
cracked areas and attached them with rivits. They look like the same
rivets that were used to anchor the wood decking so I'm assuming it was
the guy who built the boat out.

What can I do to repair this and the loose rivets in the bottom?

I take it that who ever had the boat before you sistered in another
couple of pieces of aluminum over the cracked ribs?

Are the cracks along the length of the rib or across the width of the
rib? Doesn't matter actually because the correct way to fix it would
be to weld the breaks on the ribs to make it solid again. It's not
hard to find a welder who can weld light aluminum quickly and cheaply.
I've done it on a couple of aluminum boats and it works fine.

With respect to rivets, there are a couple of ways to do this
including drilling the old ones out and replacing them, but that can
be problematic if you don't have experience with hand riveting or have
the power tools to make a tight join. My advice, if the rivets are
leaking, is to use MarineTex epoxy or JB Weld and just cover them over
after cleaning the area and making it a good surface for bonding.

Paint the bottom with Gluvit after fixing the rivets.