TOPIC: FINALLY START RESTORING MY 1959 LARSON THUNDERHAWK

I did uses these line in one of my other post but thought I need to tell this story in its own post so I can keep updating it. Thanks. Well my son and I started restoring the 1959 larson thunderhawk jr on monday (7-9-2012). As of today (7-12-2012) we have stripped it down, seperated the hull from the deck and started sanding the old house paint that someone put on it. Today I removed the wood part of the transom and started cleaning up all the edges of the hull. When I was seperating the hull and the deck the transom area had something bonding them together that I want to call plaster. Can anyone tell me exactly what it is and is there a better option in these more modern days to use to bond the back together when I reassemble it? I also want to know if I should use wood or fiberglass to rebuild the transom? As you can see I need to do some fiberglass repair on the deck area of the transom.

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Looks like a nice project. It takes time. My Winner has been put on the back burner too many times. I'm also doing a 96 F-150 for my son. Your fiberglass skills are going to be well used I see but the end result should be awesome.

We finished a total resto on a Thunderhawk Sr 3 years ago. A couple of things you might want to look for...( I'm assuming Sr & Jr are built the same )

The seats bases are cardboard covered in glass, we removed our and replaced with wood.

The stringers run from side to side, we removed them and ran from front to back. ( much stronger and supports the boat bottom better )

The core in the boat is cedar which was delaminated and water logged in our boat, we removed the core and put back together with extra layers of glass instead of a core. I've read where a lot of these boats have cracked bottoms and you don't want to go though all the work and have that happen.

We replaced the transom with wood, if done right I think it's the way to go...

My 2 cents

On a more positive note...these are GREAT boats and you'll get alot of looks on the lake when you finished

Pictures sent Boozer...