Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

Working on something cool

Every once in a while doing this part time boat thing you get to do something really neat. I had a local guy here call me one day and said he bought an old wood boat and wanted me to look at it and see if it was worth keeping. When he brought it over I saw him coming down the driveway and thought " that boat looks pretty good". Upon closer look I realized it was an Ostrum (boat shop specialties) that was in remarkable shape. We poked and prodded and found zero soft wood. It had never had anything but a painted bottom and said it had been in a garage for the last 15 years. He has a Deschutes trip coming up so we decided to put a glass bottom on it.

I forgot to get any pics before flipping the boat and removing the chines.

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mike Baker on September 9, 2016 at 12:53pm

Upon flipping the boat I saw that whatever bedding compound was used way back when had completely failed. What was left was hard as a rock. The chines were nailed on (the entire boat is nailed together) and came off alarmingly easy.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mike Baker on September 9, 2016 at 12:57pm

The current owner was gracious enough to sand off most of the previous bottom paint. I sanded the rest of the mixture of Brown Yellow and a particularly tenacious layer of Green. Who paints the bottom of a Drift Boat in U of O colors! It looks like the entire boat was Yellow at one point.