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Aluma craft alpexwood or aluminum frame

wen4222

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"I have a aluma craft alpex bo

"I have a aluma craft alpex boat 14 ft with 50 hp mercury. its fiberglass runabout ts-14-al-ra, my question is, does the frame have wood or aluminum framing. and what year was it made. the motor was a 1968 mercury but i couldnt find the age of boat'"
 
"AlumaCraft has been around si

"AlumaCraft has been around since the mid 1940's.

Over the years they have been bought/sold by numerous corporations.

They built fiberglass models (in addition to their aluminum boats) between 1961 and 1970.

In 1962 AlumaCraft was acquired by the "Alpex" company so it is safe to say your model is somewhere between 1962-69, however, I can find no model records for the AlumaCraft earlier than 1975.

Now as to construction. Just from personal experience (when not fixing Mercs I build wooden boats and do repairs to fiberglass rigs) it would be highly unlikely that the frame material would be aluminum.

Fiberglass was almost always layed up over solid wood or plywood and the early composite or sandwiched style stringers (if solid wood wasn't used) would be a Balsa wood core.

Now marine epoxy is used for fiberglass construction - back when your hull was made it would have used Polyester resins.

Given that the "hybrid" types of that resin were not available in the 1960's that would allow for successful bonding to aluminum in particular (the polyester must be blended with a polyurethane), it's really a safe bet that you have "wood cores"..."
 
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