Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

Ok I've found a guy via a jonboat forum that lives about 30mins from me, he did an awesome job on his jonboat rebuild and did a ton of fab work to it...we have talked a bit and I think I'm going to give him a shot at the transom I'll be building on my future 3rd toon. He had a couple questions for me like what thickness plate I'll want and what size bracing I'll need.....here's how I plan on doing it unless y'all have different opinions?





I also seen this at the boat show, it's open on top and you can see the bracing



I'm going with at least a 150 but I'm considering a 225 also what is yalls opinions on this???? Im not looking to start the what is your boat rated for just looking for some ideas on the design that will be strongest. I'll also add that I'm buying a donor boat and going to use the tubes to build a custom tube for my boat. As of now this will be the cheapest route for me since there's no place to buy a single log around here and if I buy one up north for a couple grand then drive up there and use gas I'll just get a donor boat locally

That looks great to me. The bracing on that transom is very similar to what I added to mine, without the third toon though, just bracing up to the cross members. Because I didn't have the third toon, I also added supports from the top of the transom on the outer end back to the mounting points of the other toons, and then forward 3 feet. This provided a path for the force to be distributed forward and across the entire structure.

Full disclosure, I'm an electrical engineer and sucked at mechanical engineering in school....but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express recently.

MB

Thanks michael, any ideas on how thick the plate needs to be?

Ryan, my transom is two 1/4" plates with 1 1/2"x3"x1/4" rectangle tubing stacked and sandwiched between. The top plate tieing the transom and rear bulkhead together is also 1/4" aluminum plate.

I actually bought 2-22'x25" tubes to make mine. I wanted to keep one factory tube intact leaving the original end cap in place as a bulkhead. Then used the 2nd end cap as another bulkhead ahead of the transom. The fuel tank is between the bulkheads. I then welded 2 1/2"x1/4" C-channels above M brackets to help bridge the joint,and drop the center tube below the outers more. The overall length 25'-6".

Mine is 1/4" as well.

Thanks, Brian mine will be very similar to yours I was planning on putting 2 tubes together. The tubes I'm looking at are 24' but I want to extend it a bit to get it out behind the others, so I can get a bit more deck space in the rear. The guy that might do my welding is on tinboats I seen you posted your build there also so I posted mine also!