Well me and my friend Matt started on my bowfishing deck/platform today.

We got most of the plans laid out, figured out how we wanted to do it and built the initial main brace.

The figuring out exactly how we were gonna do it took the most time. We should be able to almost finish the main building of it tomorrow... then this weekend we'll get the wiring done on the lights/generator/switches/etc/etc...

and should be bowfishing at night come next week.

It may not look like much work, but that's the part of the boat that is going to be subject to the most stress and flexing. We wanted the brace across to be really stout so we got our c-channel (which will be bolted through two spots. it's just screwed in for now) bolted up and welded our vertical bar to it and then welded the two crossbeams on either side and to it. we tacked(for now) some little 1"x1" pieces in between to combine the two... next we'll put our 45 degree support bars for the deck on it and get it all going...

the deck will be 4.5ft wide at the front and 5.5ft wide at the back. it'll be almost 7ft long.. which makes it prolly around 35 square feet. not too bad... it'll have an 18" high knee rail to keep me from falling off. i just ordered a new 60" shaft for my trolling motor (so she'll reach from the deck)...

i'll have 8 10,000 lumen lights(350 watt, but fancy ones) running off of it. 3 on each side and two on the front. they'll be wired to a switch to control them seperately (left/right/front) then into my 3250watt generator.

but this was a good first evening's work.

(note: first pic, the front of the boat is to the right --->>>)

 

cool C man keep up the good work!

 

Here's a very rough sketch of what it will sort of look like when it's done.

 

bad assery...

 

Gonna have chairs?

 

Will the boat float with all that weight

JJ that stuff is pretty light. what kind aof boat is that? its very wide. and not very deep.


EDIT: Never mind I looked at the first pic again it is deeper then I though. Dang pics playing mind games

 

nope. not planning on it initially, at least...

it really won't be all that heavy. my motor is really heavy (70hp Evinrude), but I'm adding float pods to help keep the rear up...

my boat is a 1648 (16ft long, 48" at the bottom). at the top front it's 54" and the rear is around 72" or so. it's wide enough.

 

The first pics I really couldn't tell how long it was. Looks good let us know how it turns out!

You making me want to go fishing....only problem its snowing and 30s

 

looks good!......i wanna boat!

 

nice man, i gotta get going on mine, im gonna make mine removable tho as its used by my pops for regualr fishing also

 

we got some more done last night...

should be finished with the building of it, sunday... then wire it all up monday night..

planning on sending it down to houston to be galvanized in a week or two, which will be realllly nice if it works out. no rust. :-)

here's where we stopped:

 

mine is removeable too...

it's bolted on with two bolts through the c-channel mounts under each support leg.

 

that would be sweet to have a livewell built into the floor of that......

 

Looks good so far! Can't wait to see it finished. You posting all these fishing and boat pictures makes me wanna get out on the lake again.

 

God damn that deck is kinda high isnt it.

 

looks really nice! How will it ride with the deck in front?

 

except for that fact that all of the fish i shoot off of that deck are not fish that need to be kept alive. when i shoot catfish, they'll go straight into a cooler with ice...

no. 12" off the boat with an 18" knee rail. 12" is just enough to clear my huge lights. i think my lights are like 10" wide by 8" tall...

should get on plane a little quicker, since my 70hp evinrude weighs the back down a bit. i'm adding float pods to the back to bring the back up more, since the generator will be in the back.

 

almost done.

here's where we got to last night:

Picture 1) how far we got... shows all the 45's we put in, the crossmembers, knee rail, etc..
Picture 2) the mount for the trolling motor. i'll be putting in a 12" 2x6 in that space and bolting it in...
Picture 3) another view of how far we got...
Picture 4) shows how the deck goes with the contour of the boat...
Picture 5) my new sticker for my boat!
Picture 6) my new sticker for my ranger!

 

lookin good.

what's the final platform going to be made out of?

 

looks good C.......the reason i said live well in the floor is because that would make a great platform to regular fish from.....

 

looks great!

who did you find to help weld all that up?

 

^ a friend of mine off a bowfishing site i'm on...

 

sweet! you guys are making fast progress.

 

so... dumb quetion.. whats bowfishing, and is it just what it sounds like it is??


JOSH

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowfishing