I have an old 17' aluminum fish and ski boat. The gunwhales are currently covered in boat carpeting, and they are old, faded, and in some spots worn thin.
The carpet is captured in place by aluminum angle "iron" which runs the length of the boat, and both holds the carpet in place but also rivets the side of the boat to the gunwhale, and the gunwhale to the inner wall of the boat. I suspect that this is structural, so I don't want to drill out and replace these solid rivets with blind rivets.
What I am considering doing, is to trim off the carpet to expose the underlying aluminum. Then cover it with some sort of fascia.
Carpet is an option. Another option might be to create a thin wood surface of cedar and mahogany strips. Yeah, overkill for aesthetics, but I think I might look pretty cool, as I used to obsess with old wooden boats.
If I use carpet, I could use long strips of 3/16" x 5/8" aluminum if I could find it. I could lay the new carpet down, then hold it in place with the aluminum strips and blind rivet them in place. Any idea where I might find long aluminum strips? Alternatively I could machine a half-round cedar batten to retain the carpet. But....how to then hold the cedar to the aluminum without screwing up the finish on the cedar and getting a good hold on the thin aluminum?
If I were to use thin strips of wood, how might I hold this together / in place? I don't want to add 100lbs of weight to the boat. Any ideas?
I'm leaning a bit towards wood as the retaining strips. Would be easier to make as opposed to deburring the edge of the aluminum and polishing it.
Insure it quite well
Scuttle it
Buy a new boat
sparks
Carpet, Though I despise it some times it just makes sense. Also the up keep of the wood would be very hard to do with trips to the cabin and shooting and hunting and keeping up the home.
As far as Spark's idea. Don't listen to him, he is a railroader but then so am I or was. Some times it is hard to sink one of those damned things. You only can when you don't want to. Of course then there is the 10 gauge that mysteriously went off in the boat when goose hunting. You would have to wait till next year for that. [waiting] I think federal migratory just closed at least here in Idaho.
Rick