Picked this Aerocraft up today, cool boat

Terry,
cool boat. I think you will have a good time with that one. Looks like it has already seen a few good seasons.
 
Thanks Bob and Tom, the rest are just envious of my new duck boat, as well as my dashing good looks and charming personality.
 
Yes, we'll have to have monthly meetings at the local watering hole to discuss upcoming events and how best to maintain the legacy of our fine craft! LOL I did a search before I went to buy it and couldn't find any info on it, except for your boat. Mine is 12' long, 52" beam and maybe 18" deep. You can't see it in the pics, but there are two 2" tubes that run through the boat like on a Alumacraft Ducker. I love the paint job you did! What color/brand did you paint yours? What do you think about putting grass rails and a dodger on it?
 
I have been looking for more information on this boat for over a year and I can't find jack past the history of the Aerocraft company in St. Charles...nothing about this (or your) specific boat. From that point of view alone, I know that the duckboat models, like ours, are pretty rare. The picture here in the forum boat files looks like a square stern version of mine... somewhere between mine and yours. I think you have a real find with the stakedown tubes...obviously built to duckhunt

There are plenty of "newer" Aerocrafts out there from the 50's on, but I haven't found any other of the boats specifically designed for hunting. They built a lot of "leisure" craft. This is one of my favorites:

http://www.theclassicboathouse.com/aerocraft1950.html

The paint was all FME from Lou. I figured I'd use the best since I took the whole thing down to bare aluminum. There must have been 4 coats of old paint to strip and it was a lot of work to get around all of the rivets.

I think the base color was marsh grass and I mixed up some different shades using the dark brown to alter shades. It took a while with a 1" brush but the layering really does resemble the breakup found in flooded corn. Not sure about needing the dodger. The flat bottom and short freeboard keeps this boat out of anything rougher than a ripple and I can't get her up on plane with the oars yet.

You would think that more of these duckboat versions would show up somewhere.
 
Hey Scott:
(I though I had better shout out to you in the forum rather than the classifieds!)

I WAS going to take the lazy approach to this and just paint the puppy and put it into the water, but I'm thinking that I should just bite the bullet and strip it down to bare aluminum. What did you use to seal up the rivets? I'm going the stencil route for painting it. But I'll probably use very similar colors. I replaced the transom board with Ipe. This stuff is HARD! I was going to encapsulate it with epoxy, but my friend said is wasn't necessary. It's tough stuff, used for commercial walkways and boardwalks.

Any bites on your boat yet? You really should put it on Craigslist!
 
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