filling holes in aluminum boat

[hovermn]

I just bought an older 14' aluminum boat for cheap and plan on restoring it, and adding a few personal touches as well. Wasn't there was a thread a while ago that touched on filling holes in an aluminum boat. Mine is a 1960 Crestliner and has seen plenty of modifications, resulting in many empty holes and random bolts in the sides of the boat. What's the best way to fill them? Can a guy just braze them shut and grind smooth, or are rivets the way to go? If I had to guess, I'd say there will be something like 30-40 holes to fill, possibily more as the top trim is missing, and replaced by plywood sandwhiching the sides (that HAS to go!) Yeah, amazingly enough it holds water!

Thanks

[hovermn]

I gutted the boat of everything but the main hull. I picked up some aluminum brazing rod and tried filling the 70 holes, but that failed. Because the aluminum is under stress from the bends, it tried to go back to straight when heat was applied. It wasn't the brazing rod's fault, rather the nature of the beast. Giving up on that, I started to sand the exterior. It was full of rough chipped paint. In the mean time, I had also picked up a Johnson 15 hp motor and a trailer.

I got about half way done sanding when I took a step back, looked at how bad of shape the whole thing was in, and decided to scrap it. Yup, it's probably a pop can by now. Scrap yard paid $0.50 a pound for it, which cut my loss in half. Half of almost nothing isn't too bad.

Here's the great part! I scrapped the boat and got $50. Sold the motor for what I paid for it. I painted the trailer and made $150 profit from that. What did I do with the money you ask...

I picked up a very nice 14' Lund Deep and wide. Came with trailer/spare, trolling motor, depth finder, oars, ancher and 25 hp johnson Paid $850 for it, which means I pretty much bought it for $50 over what I made from the motor and trailer

I have a much nicer setup then I could have ever put together with the old beat up boat and it came ready to fish... and that's what I've been doing :-) So, no more project boat. I was fun at times, but ended up being a losing battle.