Wooden Boat People

By McKenzieDriftBoat.com

Seat Tray Construction

I'm putting together the parts needed for the seats. In doing so, I have a question:

For the trays off to the side of the rowing seat (or for that matter also the inside bottom of the passenger seat storage hatch)..How is it (the 1/4" ply that will be the bottom) attached to the rest of the frame? Do you even use 1/4" for these tray bottoms?

Either way, I don't want to just screw+glue it to the bottom, leaving a plywood edge exposed on the front and rear face of the seat...

so, Do you rabbet the bottom inside of the seat frames where it will sit and lay the plywood in that way? or maybe dado the frames (though they seem a bit shallow to dado and leave a whole lot left over for storage or whatever)? Or maybe add some small pieces around the bottom edge and create a frame to sit the wood on?

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin C. on April 5, 2010 at 7:51am

Hey john, I've always just attatched the 1/4" ply to the bottom of the seat frames with 3/4" #8 screws and a washer in between to leave a gap for drainage.You could bevel the edges so they aren't as visible but they will be the last thing you will ever see when you look at the whole picture...its easy to micro-examine while building but remember you'll never see that after you're first adventure on the water

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Permalink Reply by Mike Baker on April 5, 2010 at 1:42pm

Hey John,
I have done it all three ways, nailed directly to the bottom, cut dado's on the table saw and now I use a 3/8" router rabbet bit. Just dado out a groove after every thing is assembled, the corners of the plywood need to be rounded a bit to fit. I also put a 3/16" hole in each corner for draining.
Mike

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Permalink Reply by John Greenleaf on April 5, 2010 at 4:28pm

Thanks for the input; I never even thought about the drainage issue! One rainy float tip and I would have been riding around with mini-aquariums all over the place. Might work well to double as a live well, but that's about the only up side.