building a boat blind

W

wes kimler

New member
I am trying to decide between a folding or stationary blind on my 16ft fiberglass boat. Any build ideas would be a great help.
 
What kind of boat are you using? I would suggest against building a "hard box blind". If you ever swamp one, they tend to rool over on you too. Keep it light.
 
My boat is a late 70's fiberglass fishing boat with a 45 horse outboard and console steering. I would also like the blind to be removable for fishing.
 
Wes, I'd go with one of the colapsable blinds or design your own. I think the commercialy available ones are extremly over priced but they sell a lot of them.
 
I was thinking about using electrical conduit for the frame and building it myself. I agree that the commercial blinds are to expensive. Thank for the help
 
Use 1" emt at the smallest. Lots of how to's out there but the best place for ideas is to get a look at one somewhere.

Vick
 
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I have been thinking of rigging up a collapsible blind on my boat. Check out this one from Cabelas, like you guys said way over priced.

Folding Boat Blind

Just click on the individual item and it should come up with a page that has pictures of just the blind frame on a boat. This one is designed to collapse flat for moving. I was thinking of using 1 inch square steel tubing for this project but my nephew who is a welder says that it will cost about $100.00 canadian. I never thought of using conduit or some sort of plastic tubing.

Bill Gass
Oromocto, NB
 
I built a stationary blind on my boat and had my first boating accident in over 40 years of duckhunting.......I was standing in my boat using a extension handle which came loose and my boat turned sharply to the right throwing me to the left and the boat started taking on water before I could pull the kill switch the boat turned over in 42 degree water. lucky for me I was able to hold on to the overturned 15 ft boat for 4 hrs until the tide and wind pushed me onto a island. this happened at 2:30 in the afternoon on my way to the boat landing. The Coast Guard send a helicopter out about 11:30 that night and they did a wonderful job in there search pattern where I had been hunting but I was several miles down below them ......I was picked up the next morning just after daylight around 8:30am ........the outside tem was 45 degrees .....so after a total of 17 hrs I was very cold and tired but thanks to the sheriff dept and US coast guard I am still here .......yea all my survial gear went out and floated away cell phone, flares, flash light I am still trying to think what I need to do other than not stand up in the boat in order to see because of a stationary blind and a need to attach a line to my survial gear box which floats.
a stationary blind
 
JGabe:
Welcome to the 2007 survivors club. Man, I thought stranded 7 hours tough, but you win the prize. I've seen some film on that Columbia river (boat pilots on the sand bar) and could not believe the size of those waves or the speed of that current. Anyway thanks to these rescue people you made it but losing all that gear hurts I'm sure. I'm sure you had some serious thoughts while waiting for rescue. 45 degrees isn't freezing but damn uncomfortable when wet. Glad you made it--how was the family? It's always harder for those who wait.
Jim Bosanny
 
The problem with most of the scissors type lbinds are that they take up valuable room inside the boat to accomodate the attachmet of the pivot points for the blinds. Unless you have a jonboat with really long and straight gunnels, you must attach the blind to the boat either on the seats or so far towards the middle of the boats that the blind gets in the way of moving around in the boat - all my opinion.

I bought a blind kit from flyway specialties and modified it to fit my needs. I don't remember how much it was but I considered I paid a little more than $100 more than had I just bought the materials and copied the flyway concept (which would be easy to do but unethical). I was happy to pay $100 for Jamies time that he put into the design and for his phone support when I was bouncing modification ideas off of him. I figured it would have taken me an extra 20 hours minimum to recreate his design and buy all the hardware which equates to $5/hour.

I would post the actual link but the stinking company nanny watch won't allow me to. The site is:

www.flywayspecialties.com

I have been extemely happy with the blind. Everyone who has hunted in the boat has commented on what a great design the blind is. This from friends who own all the other blind kits that are more popular.

Mark W
 
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