1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose -- with FDF (Frameless Deck Foundation)

[Dabbler_E]

After giving up on my Terry bass boat (transom + deck + stringers + major hull cracks = more that I was willing to throw effort at, especially since the hull layout was really crummy for my needs) (see thread in my signature), I picked up this 1448 tinny + tilt trailer + 45# foot controlled trolling motor + 1 year old deep cycle battery for 450 as a fishing & hunting vessel. I really liked the amount open space to move around, have bags of decoys, etc., and I liked the V hull (I guess it's really a semi V) for the 7,000 ac lake I hunt and fish.

This pic is actually from the CL ad -- I bought it without the motor, but you can see the fishing setup with swivel seats.

By the time I had actually gotten around to taking pics, I had already stripped it down, so I hand fit the decking & wood trim pieces back into position for pics. However, you can see where I had stripped carpet adhesive (and paint) from the gunnels, which were fully carpeted when I bought it.

Lots of decking. All 3/4 ply, waterlogged, laid over even more 3/4 ply on the seats with steel angle iron supports in between. Clearly, a major wood-ectomy was in order.

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

190 pounds of plywood, carpet, and rusty hardware

That bottom number on the capacity plate is tough to read, but it says 710 lbs total capacity. 190 lbs decking & carpet + about 20 lbs waterlogged foam under the floor (guesstimate -- didn't actually weigh it) + 89 lbs trolling motor & seats + 50 lbs marine battery = 349 lbs. I weigh 175 clothed, which puts the boat at almost 75% of capacity with just me, before even adding any outboard & gas.

That stuff's gotta GO!

That's more like it! PO had cut out battery wells in the seats (plus more coutouts for a car tape deck & speakers).

Looking down into one of the battery wells. Apparently some acid leaked out & corroded the rib (the dark spot on the rib), leading to....

This lovely patch job. That will be ripped out & welded.

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

I filled the hull with water and found generally very slow leakage around the rivets. This ding on the bows, though, dripped steadily. It will be welded, too.

Transom knee is in good shape, but wood will need to go.

This is the big structural issue: PO had removed the center seat. I didn't realize that until I looked at pics online of this model boat.

And I was so happy about all the open floor space!

I plan on fabbing some braces out of Al sheet to buttress those sides, but I will not be putting back a full bench seat.


OBJECTIVES:

My aim is to have a light, open boat, with easily removable decking forward of the front bench seat (to use the foot controlled trolling motor when fishing). It should be able to handle 1' chop (the most I've seen on the lake I hunt). I do want a flat floor (cover the ribs) in the center area -- I'm leaning toward aluminum deck. The hull is rated for a 25 hp, but several lakes around me are 10 hp max, so I'm looking for a 9.9.

Next steps:

Clean it out
Have hull cracks/holes welded
Fabricate & rivet on side braces
Gluvit keel & rivets
Prep, prime (self etching on bare spots) & paint (olive drab or marsh brown)
foam under deck, fit & attach deck
wood to cover bench seats, with lids for battery wells
wood for transom -- cut, seal, mount
wiring & accessories
Hopefully I'll have a motor by this point -- mount & rig the power!

 

[ezmobee]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Nice work on the tear out. That's a good base to work with and looks like you have everything planned out so I don't have anything to add. Should be a nice fishing rig and this one will be fun to watch.

Side rant: I just do not understand why everyone seems to feel the need to put a darn built-in stereo in everything. What the heck is wrong with a boom box? They make really nice ones with ipod docks and everything! And hey, you can even take it out and use it OTHER PLACES! Sheesh, I just don't get it. It's just something else to break and then people are cuttin' holes all over for speakers and what not.

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

@EZ -- amen!

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Below is a sketch of my idea for side braces, then adding in the virtual deck

 

[jigngrub]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

It's going to take a lot of polishing to make that old turd shine!

Keep us updated with the pics, I'm interested to see how she turns out.

 

[ezmobee]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Below is a sketch of my idea for side braces, then adding in the virtual deck

In my opinion, perfect

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Trip to the scrap yard, to trade aluminum parts of scrapped outboard (exhaust housing & lower unit housing) for signs & al sheet (plus a little cash in pocket). The speed limit sign is 4' x2' --great for the floor! The stop ahead sign will go for side braces, and the real estate sign will be for battery well lids. Score!

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Made a paper prototype of the side brace

when flattened out, the paper prototype provided a template

Traced the template onto the aluminum, and cut out with circular saw & jig saw.
Smoothed edges with a file.

"B" side -- STOP AHEAD!

Now to the bending, which will be a bit tricky.....

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

The sign aluminum is quite stiff and thick (I've heard it's a different, harder alloy than is used in boat making). So, first I annealed the lines to be bent to make those areas more ductile.

First, color in the bending lines with sharpie

Then, propane torch until the black goes away.

Allow to cool.

Lacking a bending brake, I used pieces of steel angle iron and C-clamps to secure the pieces to a worktable, then bent by hand (and foot, and knee, and a LOT of grunting). Once it got to about 30 degrees, I could then use a deadblow mallet to bend it the rest of the way over the angle iron. Unfortunately, I didn't take pics of the process, as I couldn't find the camera.

Here are the finished products.

Set in place

These are definitely NOT PROFESSIONAL fabrications. The angles aren't quite 90 deg, the faces are not quite flat, the mating surfaces are not even close to perfect fits. But for my purposes (protection against oil-canning) they will do fine. Plus, the hull itself is not in perfect shape.

One semi-major issue with the lack of perfect fit between the bracket mounting surfaces and the hull surface is that the brackets are made of much thicker and stiffer al than the hull is. Therefore, cinching the fasteners tight will deform the hull material to match the shape of the brackets, rather than vice versa.

Let me know what you think about this solution: I plan on bedding the brackets on a bed of PL premium or MarineTex, letting that harden, and THEN cinching the fasteners. That way, gaps will be filled with solid material before pressure is exerted and the hull material shouldn't deform. Feedback appreciated!

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

I borrowed a neighbor's pressure washer the other night and sprayed out the hull, focusing on rivets and seams. So, today I took advantage of nice weather to gluvit.

This crack actually appears to have been patched pretty thoroughly. So, instead of welding (which might be tough in this spot and could loosen nearby rivets), I think I will leave the patch, carefully drill holes at the ends of the crack, and epoxy the inside surface.

 

[Woodonglass]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

All I can say is WOW!!! For Shade Tree Mek - A - Nekin that is some FINE Enjuneerun!!! We have all Learned a few things from your pics and descriptions. Thanks for Sharing!!!

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Deck & foam thoughts.

Original deck was 3/4" ply, with a single wood stringer. I want an aluminum floor for lightweight & "done forever" factors. However, I'm not a welder and I'm cheap, which means that I must be creative.

To support the relatively bendy al sheet I bought so that there is little or no flex underfoot means that the unsupported intervals of sheet needs to be short (or, perhaps, nonexistent....). One option would be a framing system constructed of square tubing stringers + frames + ties to the hull. That would be much simpler & easier if I could weld Al or wanted to pay someone else to weld all the pieces into a single frame.

Another option would be to stick to transverse supports (i.e., port to starboard) but have a lot of them. That would mean a lot of square tubing. Even with 15" spacing there would be a fair amount of flex without additional support of the deck. Also, 1/16" thickness square tubing has a bit of flex in it and needs support itself (Unless I wanted to spring for 1/8" thick, which I don't for weight & cost)

The "without additional support" bit got me thinking about pourable foam, which is often used to support decks on fiberglass boats, but has many "NAY" votes on this forum due to corrosion, blocking the bilge drains, etc.

So, my thinking now is to use laminated construction foam as the primary (and probably only) support for the deck. That means a flat foam surface on top for the deck to rest on, and the bottom of the foam closely following the contours of the hull (with channels for drainage). I actually do a lot of work with foam in decoy-making (here's a link to my hotwire band saw and hotwire hand saw some of the results: wood ducks divers geese ) so I'm more comfortable working with foam than aluminum by a wide margin. 1" foam will be preferred to reduce the amount of tapering at the margins of each sheet. With the foam resting relatively nicely on the hull, there should be NO need for additional framing at all -- the deck can simply rest on the foam (with a few fasteners to the ribs to hold it in place) with zero unsupported stretches. That foam can support me standing directly on it with little compression. Put AL sheet on top and there should be no compression at all. And, since the foam won't be molded to the hull perfectly (as pourable foam would), all water will be able to drain to the bilge. A bonus feature of this design is that the deck and foam (laminated into one solid piece) can both be easily pulled out to access the bottom or to allow drying during the off season.

Has anybody on the forum tried such an approach?

 

[Bob_VT]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Very nice! I love to recycle those signs since they are a great source of aluminum!!! I have been preaching that for many years. If you can find a 4x4 sign they are usually thicker and require less support.

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Started on the foam floor underlayment.

There was a clear line of dirt where the original deck met the hull, so that was my reference.
First step -- measure width and depth at various points

Then, transfer width measurements to a sheet of 2" rigid foam and cut. The aluminum deck will rest directly on the top surface of this foam.

At least this stuff doesn't itch like fiberglass! A respirator is still a very good idea, though. This stuff is not biodegradable.

I wanted this sheet to nest nicely into the hull, matching surface for surface. That meant the underside of the sheet of foam needed to be beveled -- but how much? I laid out a grid of transverse strings at the height of the deck, then at each string I measured how far in from the hull I had to go before the hull was 2" below the string. (Actually, I went 1.75", so that the foam won't come to a knife edge)

Then transferred these measurements to the sheet -- the edge will have a rounded bevel to this line.

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Foam is really easy to shape -- many tools can be used. Knives & saws are good for knocking off big chunks. 60 grit sandpaper can knock it down and smooth very quickly.

The bevel line (2" hull depth below deck) indicates where I need to add additional foam to get to the bottom of the hull. Because the hull bottom flattens toward the stern, I need less additional foam back there and more toward the bow. The gaps are for the ribs.

I used a post-and-scribe method to trace the contour of the bottom of the hull onto each section, and then used my hotwire band saw to cut that profile. In each section, the hull is deeper at the front edge, so that's the profile I cut intending to shave the foam further back to fade to the sternward profile.

After rough shaping, each section was gorilla-glued to the main sheet.

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

For final shaving and smoothing, a shurform rasp is your friend, followed by a sanding block w/ 60 grit.

Almost there!

Once the shape is finalized, I will dry fit it in the hull, find out where the pressure points are and then shave them down to get fairly uniform mating between the hull and the foam surface.

 

[Dabbler_E]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Here's the final shape, after deepening the grooves for the ribs and carving a channel down the center for drainage.

Here's my girl helping to check the fit

Standing test -- good support from the hull all the way across

And, here's $85 worth of square tubing and al angle that I had bought to frame the floor. Felt great to return it all!

Next steps:
Mount support braces
Prep and paint hull
Cut Al sheet to match foam foundation
Make hatches for battery wells.
Rewire
Mount & rig the power
Fish.

 

[Huron Angler]

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Re: 1980 14' Lowe Superior V Restore/Repurpose

Now that's some great work there, I'm impressed. Attention to detail helps out a bunch and you have some great ideas

Those buttresses look great and should add tons of rigidity to the hull. I'd worry about tripping on one when I have a fish on, but I'm just clumsy

I agree with you 100% on keeping the weight minimized at all costs. These little tin cans don't allow for much and it's very easy to overload with an outboard, two people and gear.

Looking forward to what else you have planned, good luck to ya!