Seat Woes

[dougd]

I think I'm made of bad luck when it comes to working on boats. My 44 year old Lettman needed a new seat so I ordered a nice sliding seat. Unfortunately due to just having back surgery I never checked it. Months passed before I got to it. HOLY SWEARS (Lots of them) it was to narrow to fit and a day late to send it back. So I tried to make it work with lots of modifications but in the end it was too dang high and the back band was a good a$$ warmer. Did a lot of seat surgery and just couldn't get it down to the height I needed so ended up cutting the whole dang thing out which was a chore in itself with, again, a lot of swearing and a few cans of liquid courage to get through it.

So now it is back to the drawing board and definitely a new seat of some kind. Just the kind of mistake to piss ya off but stuff happens, I'm sure nothing like this has happened to any of you!. I do have a way to cob the seat back together for another boat so am saving it. Probably get lost along with McCrea's propane! Worst part is the hull needs to be washed out and it's winter here. There's enough metal dust in it to make a cat smile at at 16' 6" litter box!

 

[Jim Dodd]

You know Everyone has those kinda days !
Some times a good night's sleep helps !
What kind of seat did the Lettman have ?

Jim

 

[Holmes375]

I'm not gonna tell ya about the time I was drilling out a composite tandem to install a bow tug-eye and punched the first hole... in the stern Its nice to have an attachment at both ends but I had only the bits for one tug-eye on hand. Had to wait for a new order to arrive before finally got that bow loop situated.

That was many years ago and surviving friends still remind me of it to this day.

 

[dougd]

Jim, It had seats that were the hard molded F/G without any padding which was what on hand 44 years ago. Very uncomfortable. I, we, put in a Phase 3 seat that added a lot of weight and was not very comforatable but made due. Got pulled out lifting it off some racks which showed we didn't glue it down good enough. Went to this sliding seat but as the tale tells it didn't work. Live and learn.

Holmes, put a seat in a canoe backwards not once but twice! One was easy to fix the other was glued in...facing backwards. Sometimes ya just have those Oh Fork Me moments!

dougd

 

[dougd]

Seat problem is solved. A quick conversation with a friend pointed me a different direction with this project. Sometimes that is all it takes when you're stuck on one school of thought. Basically the culprit was the square stock of the seat which put me up too high in the boat making the back band useless. I took the square stock out of the equation and used the slider tubes cut to a shorter length but still long enough to epoxy into place on the hull. Four cuts and then some screws to hold the slider tubes in place to the tubes holding the seat and presto! the perfect height and easily held in place with some resin and Dynel.

 

[Holmes375]

Nice job there!

 

[dougd]

Thanks Holmes. I still have a little more to do with resin on the tubing/hull(I'm a firm believer of overkill for some parts of a rebuild) but believe I could take it out as is. Just nice be over the hump on this one.