Old boat time, 1959 Lone Star Flamingo

Picked this little guy up yesterday.  Seller claimed it was a 1959, but looking through the archive on Fiberglassics I couldn't find anything that made me think it was the exact match.
I did see ads for the Capri and Flamingo in the 1960 catalog that looked closer to me.  Cleaning everything up today I found a tag that, while very very faded, seemed to say Flamingo
I've found little to nothing on the Holsclaw trailer, they were from the late 50s I belive, so its possible that its original?  Despite the fact that the bearings are horrible it rode very nicely on the way home.

In between cleaning I'm trying to find some pictures of the interior of them from stock, as this one has been FloridaMan'd a little bit and I'll need to undo that.

Click the picture for a larger image.
   

Removed the Florida Man'd transom and part of the flooring.  Folks, don't use regular plywood for boats.  Just don't.

I know what I'm going to do to get the transom situated, but I'm up in the air on the flooring.  I still have the original floor to remove in order to see what the base looks like, but I'd like to hear thoughts on the floor.

 

I had a 1966 Lone Star Cruiseliner.  I liked how it looked, and it now belongs to another grm'er

Very cool! I had a 1963 Glaspar Avaolon for a while. I love the look of boats from that era. 

I've been wanting to pick up a similar generation boat to restore as well. What's kept me from pulling the trigger is questioning how much I will actually enjoy it VS just getting a newer not so pretty boat.

So my question is, are they more than just a good looking boat? I'd like to pull my little kiddos on a tube and tie up to a party barge with friends on occasion. Wrong application?

Nice boat! There are as many ways to do flooring out there as there are restorations. My choice would be marine grade plywood that was completely glassed over. Figure it will make it another 40 years or better.

In my 73 Chaparral the PO "put a new floor in it." I've had it a couple years and I'm pretty sure he just dropped a sheet of 3/4" treated ply on top of the old floor, screwed it to the stingers and covered it in marine carpet. I've been into the transom enough to know it's dry but I havent had the courage to pull the entire interior and lift up the plywood to see what's under it. It works fine as it is and I store the boat inside so it will be fine that way for years. As an old trihull, it's not really worth doing it right unless it was a permanent boat, and I dont think it is. Too small to be comfortable on the local lakes with all the wake boats these days.

In reply to captainawesome :

You can use them for that purpose.  Might have to eBay for a while to find a correct style towing loop thingie, but that would be a personal preference to keep it period correct.  That's the biggest pain with these old boats, finding all the old crap to keep it looking "right".  The rest of the pain is just normal boat ownership

I would think that for what you want this size and style would be the starting point and then go up from there.  This one is rated at 70HP, I'll probably start with a period correct 35HP Johnson and one day may jump up to twin 25 or 35HPs (not a fan of the looks of the period motors bigger than 35, and not a fan of Mercury motors.) 

Classic boats are only somewhat like classic cars.  People buy boats to use them, not as any sort of investment.  As a result it is a lot cheaper to pick up an older one, corollary is that when you do they usually need more work than an investment classic car would.  I will say that it is much cheaper to get an antique outboard completely restored when compared to a car.

I found these two boats below by just typing in "antique" in craigslist.  With actual searches and some patience I'm sure you could find something that fit your needs perfectly.  If you can search in the Great Lakes region and have a friend pick it up for you; the fresh water and only running them 1/4 of the year means that you can find some beauties for cheap.  Don't buy anything that has been near salt water.

https://tampa.craigslist.org/pnl/boa/d/saint-petersburg-1965-mfg-mercruiser/7099381494.html

https://tampa.craigslist.org/hil/boa/d/riverview-reduced-lyn-craft-seabreeze/7095085987.html

In reply to ultraclyde (Forum Supporter) :

I was thinking of MGP, but I wasn't sure if there was anything better out there.  

This will be my first time glassing anything myself.  I'm not really looking forward to it.

Having done the polyurethane resin and plywood route and had it go soft again in 8-10 years, use epoxy and only do it once. The epoxy is much more expensive, but it will be forever with little to no maintenance. 

I think I'd be looking for a used JetSki again as well to steal the engine and pump out of, but that's just me.

Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) said:

I think I'd be looking for a used JetSki again as well to steal the engine and pump out of, but that's just me.

  

Saw a guy that had taken a jetski motor and grafted it to a 12' aluminum boat.  Could go full speed in the 3-4" it would take to float the boat.  I've never wanted anything more, or been more terrified by anything in my life.

There's a Lonestar aluminum near me I've been eyeballing. Looks like a good set of bones to start with, but is there a preference towards fiberglass for this era?

Personal preference for the most part.  Aluminum is usually smaller though, maxes out around 16 feet?

I prefer aluminum myself.  Not sure why, maybe its just that my first boat was aluminum?

In reply to Mr_Asa :

I'll just leave this here...

JET BOAT!! Something different, cheap and fun.

In reply to Toyman01 (Forum Supporter) :

I love it.

Also, I'm going to be bugging you when I do start on the fiberglass stuff.

I stripped out more FloridaMan stuff today.

Electrical power cord for trailer lights

And the rest of the FloridaMan'd flooring.  I tried to remove the screws from the original flooring, but they had too much crap embedded in them so I'll power wash it tomorrow and work to get the original flooring up.

My wife took a good picture of me.  I didn't realize my beard had gotten so out of control

Pulled all the rotten bits out and all the old screws out.  These are just before I finished while the light was good.  I guess I cut that flashing back to the edge so that the wood sits flush with the hull?  I need to start pricing marine plywood now.

You can see the holes where the original seat-mounts were screwed in.  The front I'm thinking of doing individual seats, and the rear a bench.  I'd like to figure out a way to have the bench have a back that can swap to the front or back ( like these train seats )

Tim and I had an Evinrude Sportsman for awhile--like this, but without the Sean Connery content. Super groovy, but didn't function as a "normal" boat, i.e. issues that made it not practical/dependable for daily use. Still... it was cool. 

Was it just old boat issues that caused it, or were there peculiarities to the boat that made it not worth it?

I've always found the Evinrude boats and their history interesting.  I've also found it weird how none of the classic outboard guys seem to have any interest in them.  Some of them like the Evinrude snowmobiles, but they don't care about the boats.  I've never known anyone that had one to ask why.

It seems like you have a lot of works to do to restore the beauty of this boat. It really looks nice, I can't wait to see how it will turn out after the modification process. 

In reply to Mr_Asa :

As you said, the history of the Evinrude boats is interesting. And it was probably the best-riding small boat I've ever been aboard. In practice, for all the elegance of that hull, the controls are poorly designed and subject to binding--we did a lot of boating with the trim all the way up, and the boat winging its way along awkwardly nose-high, until the controls finally engaged and dropped it with a horrible crunching Clunk! down to a cruising plane. There were times the clunk never happened and we had to return to the boat launch, take her out, and go home to work on it yet again. And nobody else would work on it--old boat guys know, and abhor, Evinrude boats. Broke my heart, that one did.

Margie

How strange that a company so involved with outboards and boat accessories would screw up so badly with something like that.  I wonder if they outsourced the design or something?

I guess we are somewhat in this together now. After your thread I pulled the trigger and picked up this crusty crab:

70 Starcraft Falcon with a 25hp Evinrude

Untitled by hatchethairy, on Flickr

In reply to captainawesome :

Nice! love the lines on it.  What does it need?

An ad for a '67, but it looks like its just what you were looking for

In reply to Mr_Asa :

It's already running great, but going to go through the carb and fuel system. Also I'm going to add a starter once I locate a bracket since it's pull start only right now.

The decking is trashed which I expected. Transom is actually in good shape, but could use a good sealant coat.

It's just covered in algae so last night I scrubbed the topside and did a general clean up before tearing the deck out tonight.

I'll start a thread here in a few minutes. I'm really pumped though, and now I just have to convince the wife an old 25 hp Evinrude can be reliable enough to not have to paddle.