My father in law ran in to a guy in Ga. today that was telling him about a custom welder out of Pennsylvania building a really nice boat.

Its built for jet boat purposes (console and inboard style J-D's), but the guy said the builder would make them any way you wanted. One model is extremely expensive. The other one is comparable to most of the manufacturers mentioned/owned on MMT here.

The guy that owns this company used to work and weld for snyder boats (also a jet drive boat) and branched off to start his own boat company.

Most interesting thing I noticed about the boats were they were .190 hull thickness!!! and he has an option for fastening UHMW (Ultra-High-Molecular-somthing) to the bottom. The UHMW was described to me as the same type of material used for those plastic looking "cutting boards"

The video is pretty awesome on the website. He runs a boat right up the middle of a river full of rocks.

Anybody else heard of them or talked to them? Guess its another custom builder to add to the list. I'd be interested to see how much "custom" work he'd be willing to do and if he'd build one specifically for a mud motor application.

Got to be a heavy ass boat toting that much thickness of aluminum. Supposedly drafts well though.

website is www.rockproofboats.com

Well also check out these dudes too...

http://ronniesairboats.com/mudboats.htm

TXSHOCKWAVE has that stuff on the bottom of his boat. He installed it and can talk intelligently
about the application he suggest using. I would like to do the same for my boat. It is a little expensive though.

Got it on my boat and the only thing that has cut into it is concrete and T post.

Hoyt put it on for me and my next boat (if i ever sale mine ) will hav eit on from the get go!!!

For the record...........he is talking about the other James not me!!! i spend no time on nohting but the pot

Two things about the Rockproof boats that I see. One is the UHMW foot. They were great when they first came out, but they changed the way they are made and they don't work as well as the foot that comes with the jet pump. Lose hole shot and top end. A lot of people are running UHMW wings on the factory foot to take rock strikes and also prevent cavitating in choppy water. Same hole shot and top end.
Second thing is the screwed on UHMW on the bottom. I know this has been discussed here before. Drilling a hundred holes in your hull and then subjecting the fasteners to movement when striking rocks is a recipe for disaster IMO. They may have it worked out, but I can't fathom drilling that many holes below the water line in a hull that's going to hit hard stuff.
I'm sure there are arguments against everything I just said, but that's my .02

If you run a seach on the home page you can find an entire diatribe on the subject including pictures and gluing process from TXSHOCKWAVE. His boat looks and works great with this
poly on the bottom. BTW it is glued.

here is a link to an old post on oceanpoly :