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Dave Lehnert
07-12-2010, 10:24 AM
Has anyone built Pontoon boat furniture?
Know of a set of plans or any related links that may be helpful.

Ben Hatcher
07-12-2010, 11:06 AM
Dave,
There are lots of sources for pontoon boat seats. Overtons.com, westmarine.com and others carry a wide variety of seats in all kinds of configurations, colors, and stlyes. They're not cheap, but neither is doing it yourself, especially if you don't sew (well).

If you do decide to do it yourself, you're in luck because they're more or less simple, plywood boxes. You can use pressure treated ply, but it is pretty expensive and warps very badly. I used CDX ply for my boat seats. They've only 2 years old, but so far they look just as good as the day I made them. Granted, I don't leave my boat outside so it never stays damp.

My design was a simple, 4 sided box made of 1/2" CDX plywood. On inside bottom corners, I attached pieces of PT 2x4 cut at a 45. These provide lots of strenght to the boxes and give a solid surface for attaching the seats to the boat deck. I built 2x2 frames for the tops of the boxes out of more pt 2x4 ripped in half. This provides lots of strenght to the top and the rounded over edges make it less likely that the upholstery will tear. All joints were glued with Tightbond 3 and screwed with exterior screws. For my seat surfaces, I used 3/4" CDX. I drilled 4 or 5 1" holes in them for drainage/venting. For a more professional look, paint the insides of the boxes black.

Once the boxes are made, get them ready for upholstery by easing the edges and rounding the corners. Wrap everything in 1/2" foam. You can use 3m spray adhesive to help hold the foam in place. I suggest lighter colors for your vinyl as the darker ones get very hot in the sun. Use marine vinyl. The non-marine type gets really slick when it is wet. Use stainless steel staples and a high quality outdoor upholstery thread.

As for plans, the layout totally depends on your boat, what you want to use it for, etc. Find pictures of layouts you like and go from there. The easiest way to go is to simply re-do whatever the boat came with. You can cut up the old upholstery to make patterns for the new stuff and reusing the old foam will save you 80% of the total cost of a totally new interior.

Britt Crowell
11-10-2010, 7:47 PM
I suggest lighter colors for your vinyl as the darker ones get very hot in the sun.

Even my dads light brown color gets blazing hot on his pontoon boat. Stay with white and cream.

Roderick Gentry
04-18-2011, 11:57 AM
I would imagine you can make it all of wood. This certainly occurred to me. My approach initially was to think of wood composite methods, but I quickly segued to making the whole boat out of wood, pontoons also, and that is what I did last summer, only problem is that the boat turned out heavier than I would have liked since I only had 1/4" plywood to work with. But anyway, when working with wood one doesn't need a separate frame, the hulls themselves become part of the structure.