Bench seats in old flat boats?

I am wondering if I could take the two bench seats out of my ’82 Polarkraft flat? Do they add any real structural support? I think they do, but a friend says you can. I cannot afford a V-bottom with the open type design, so I would like to modify what I have. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Bench seats often contain a boat’s level flotation foam. If that’s the case with your boat, you may want to factor that into your decision.

Dan

I only know the boat I had, and in that boat the seats were an intregal part of the structure.

I helped my buddy remove the middle bench seat out of his older V bottom boat. The middle bench seat was filled with foam insulation to provide floatation. After removing it, it did make the sides of the boat a little less rigid, but not enough to worry him. We put a flat floor in the middle using treated decking board to run in-between the bottom ribs, and then screwed quarter inch plywood down over them to give the floor a surface to walk on. He then used a vinyl flooring attached with paste on cement to cover the wood. All in all, it worked out pretty well, and he hasn’t had any problems with the boat. One thing you could use if your worried about floataion is some rigid insulation board under the plywood, probably the pink “celotex”. Good luck on whatever you decide to use. I would be more concerned about it if your using it on rough water, but if your just pond fishing, or river fishing, its probably not that big of a deal.
SEDNERB