Doozit's 3rd. 10'6 deckover

[Doozit20]

Ok everyone it's time for my third build. I've been wanting to build me a deckover ever since I saw one. For a quick recap I built my yellow airboat and my dads green airboat. As well as a reallly small one. Both the yellow and green one I had the hull to start with. On my new build I am going to build the hull from scratch by riveting it together. The deminsions are going to be 6'6" wide by 10'6" long and have a 6" transom. Im building this hull using .080 5052 grade aluminum for the bottom and .040 2024 for the deck. My goal is to have a hull that is as light as my yellow hull but almost as wide as my dads boat because I like the way his rides. Or around 200 lbs.

Power plant:
im going to use my 084 off my yellow boat for this build but am going to be making a reduction drive for it and I found a good deal on a 3-blade 62" ivo medium blade prop that im going to give a try. The reduction will be right at 1.6:1. Im also going to try to keep all the rigging as light as possible because my other goal is to be able to run dry if the situation calls for it. Pictures and updates to follow along.

Steve

[Doozit20]

started out with a 16.5 lb 9" diameter piece of 6061. And I started boring the bearing holes in it. Using deep groove ball bearings

[Doozit20]

Well I accidentally hit the wrong picture on that one but anyways thats my niece trying out my kayak im fixing up for ocean fishing. She loves boats of all kinds lol

[Doozit20]

holes holes and more holes. Drilled the pattern for an 80 tooth pulley using the 8mm htd style belt...lot of research done in finding the numbers I needed trust me. And also a pic of me taking some of the aluminum off on the outside.

[Doozit20]

getting close now. Have to slow down the cutting so I dont mess up and have to start all over again....

[Doozit20]

I then cut some material out of the middle to lighten it up and then put it in the laithe for some final fitting of the bearings. After showing my buddy this he said I can afford to lighten it up even more by say 2-3 lbs more so ill be doing that soon. But for now itll be like it is until I can get some time at the laithe. Oh total weight right now with the 2 bearings in it weighs about 7.5 lbs. Im hoping I can get it down to atleast 5lb when im done.

[Doozit20]

onto the bottom pulley now. This one is a 50 tooth htd style pulley. I have a hub for direct drive already that fits good. So im going to simply mill out the center of this pulley and use the bolt pattern to bolt the pulley to the hub.

[Doozit20]

50 holes drilled later and onto the laithe where I cut the OD down to the right diameter.

[Doozit20]

and finally a test fit of the belt and both pulleys.

[Doozit20]

I still have to make a spindle for the redrive before I can go any further on that. So im now working on the hull. All I have done so far is haveing these 2 sheets bent up the way I wanted. I also bent up my T-bar for my stringers and am currently making my third T-bar transom piece because I messed up the first 2. Live and learn right.

You are now caught up as to what I have done so far. Progress updates will come along as I make them.

[Corky]

Nice pics and I like to see the actual machining like that it's very interesting...You know if you get the redrive working and incorporate the mini starter with it you'd probably have a few quick sales for them... There's a local guy here that built his boat with the center seam just like you're doing and those boats{2 of them} turned out very nice...Great job...

[Doozit20]

Thank you on the compliment, your boat is coming along nicely as well. Unfortunately I have my starter mounted on the front side of my motor so I didnt plan to incorporate the starter into the redrive. Though it would be quite interesting to have a drive unit that incorporates a mini starter and an alternator. ...hhmmmmm now u got me thinking. Oh just for reference im making this drive like the arrow prop one rather then the circle S

[Doozit20]

Ok got my T-bar transom frame piece tonight and now I can move onto some other parts. The next pieces will be the chines as my buddy calls them which are the pieces of angle that go into the radiuses that make up the bow which I think is going to be the hardest part of this whole build. Then the tricky part....cutting exactly on the center of the radius of the bend the same on both pieces of aluminum. ...the things that keep me up at night

[froghunter]

can you stack your aluminum and make one cut?

i did that for the bow on the side walls of my boat and it worked out great.

[Doozit20]

It would be on oposite aides because of it being mirror images of eachother. That and the part I need to cut is at the corner down the middle of the bend in the aluminum. Not the actual radius of the bow.

[Doozit20]

Ok took pops airboat for a ride the other day and it cranked perfectly on the first blip of the starter button. Go for a nice ride with pops riding and me driving saw a bunch of alligators and the water where we were riding was less then 1'. So it was a blast. At any rate we go do some looking around and get to a nice open spot waaayy back in the glades and I descide to bring it back to idle so we can talk about the possibility of doing some frogging and check how deeo the water is. Well heres the fun part.....the motor died when I brought it to idle speed. After checking a few things I figure out it is the idle cut off selenoid. Well that aint good.!. Long story short I got it running after a few choice words and we ran back to the ramp. Moral of the story.....keep a spare on board lol.

At any rate back to the build. The only thing ive been able to do lately id drill holes....lots and lots of holes. Holes in the stringers...holes in the transom T-bar...holes in the chines (bow pieces)....bunches and bunches of holes lol. 1 every 1" to 1.5" on the seams and 1 every 3" on the non seam pieces. All in all...those holes are going to be redrilled into the aluminum sheet and then countersunk all the ones that are on the bottom and sides of the hull......fun fun fun lol

[dr.peck76]

Those pulleys look awesome Doozit! I was looking locally to have some aluminum ones made and the price was crazy. And that was with CNC. After seeing what you've got here I see why the $$ are that way now. How many hours do you guess it took you for those?

[Doozit20]

Cnc would have taken a fraction of the time that I have in it. And I couldnt even guess at how many hours I spent on the machine. Probably more then what was required but it was a labor of love. But honestly id say prob 30 hrs conservatively. And I still have some parts I have to machine up

[Doozit20]

Heres a test fit of what I got so far. I want a tighter fit between pulleys so im ordering the next size shorter belt. If I figure correctly ill be able to use either of the belts if need be as the space between pulleys will only be about 3/4" difference from belt to belt and I have more then that in my adjustments. All in all im happy with what I have so far. Now its time for me to put this boat back together and get back on my new one lol

[dr.peck76]

Well it is definitely worth your time. They look great! Keep the pictures coming!