Matt Brings a 1958 Herter's St. Lawrence Back From the Dead

Some boats get restored because someone wants a boat. This one got restored because Matt found it buried in the dirt, growing raspberry bushes, with a groundhog living underneath it, and figured a boat with that much history deserved better.

Matt isn't a marina owner or a boatbuilder. He's not chasing a YouTube following, either, even though his kids talked him into starting a channel to document the build. He's a guy in Beaverton, Michigan who spent years restoring old cars and decided it was time to learn a new skill. The boat that talked him into it is a 1958 Herter's St. Lawrence, one of the earlier fiberglass models from a company that later became Cabela's, and it's been teaching him everything from epoxy work to fiberglass tabbing ever since.

A Boat With a Backstory

The Herter's turned up on property Matt's son bought a few years back, half-buried and doing a convincing impression of a planter. By the time Matt and his dog Ollie dug it out and got it loaded on a trailer, it had six to eight inches of dirt packed inside, a groundhog burrow underneath it, and enough raspberry canes growing through it to make you forget there was a hull under there at all.

Once the dirt came out, the history started coming into focus. Herter's St. Lawrence models were built in a narrow window, roughly 1956 to 1960, which puts this one right at the front edge of fiberglass boatbuilding, before it was the standard material it is today. Matt has been digging through what records exist, and since the boat predates any requirement for a hull identification number, tracking down its full history hasn't been easy. He did turn up one good clue while power washing the inside: a 1966 Michigan license plate, sitting on the floor like it had been waiting there the whole time.

Why This Boat, Why Now

Matt wasn't looking for a project boat. But growing up around a lot of aluminum boats in Michigan, an early fiberglass model with this much age on it stood out to him as something worth saving rather than something to walk past. There's also a piece of family timing behind it. Matt and his family bought property to build a house on Wixom Lake in Beaverton back in 2020, and the dam failed that same May, before they ever got to live on the water. Repairs are still ongoing years later. Taking on the Herter's has become Matt's way of easing into the boating life he's been waiting on, learning the ropes on a fiberglass hull before he and his son ever get the lake back.

That family connection is really what's driving the whole project. Matt has always tried to teach his kids that repairing something is worth doing, that you don't have to replace everything just because it's old or broken. Bringing a boat this old back to life, with his son's find at the center of it, gives that lesson a physical form. Once it's finished, it'll double as a standing reminder of the project every time the two of them go out fishing together.

The Build So Far

The Herter's isn't finished yet, and Matt's documenting the process as he goes rather than waiting to publish until it's done. So far, the biggest job has been rebuilding the transom from scratch. He glued two layers of 3/4 inch plywood together using High Performance Epoxy, then coated the assembled transom with penetrating epoxy to seal the wood before glassing it in 1708 biaxial cloth, again with High Performance Epoxy. Next up is finding the right thickened epoxy paste to bond the new transom into the hull, followed by tabbing and glassing it in permanently. From there, Matt's turning his attention to the inner hull, where he'll be repairing a couple of holes near the bow and stern with fresh fiberglass before the boat is watertight again.

Fiberglass repair was completely new territory for Matt going in, and he's spent a lot of time on YouTube trying to learn the ropes, including watching Andy Miller over at Boatworks Today, a beloved TotalBoat ambassador, put the products to work on his own builds. The hardest part hasn't been the resin work itself so much as sorting through everyone else's opinions on it. Between forums, videos, and self-proclaimed experts online, it would be easy to talk yourself into every composite replacement material and cutting-edge resin on the market. Matt's kept his approach practical instead: plenty of boats this old went 30 years or more without any structural repairs, and working on a budget means leaning on proven methods over the newest trend.

As a first-timer with boat repair, Matt has leaned on TotalBoat products through all of it. He's said the epoxy has been straightforward to mix and work with even as a beginner, that customer support has been quick to answer his questions, and that orders have shown up fast enough that a supply run never held the project up.

What's Next

Once the transom is tabbed in and the hull is fully glassed, Matt's Herter's will be ready for paint, hardware, and a return trip to the water. He's already looking forward to it. As he put it, once the boat is done, all he needs is the lake back.

We'll be following along as Matt keeps chipping away at this one, and we're glad TotalBoat could be part of getting a piece of 1958 boatbuilding history back on the water.

Matt's kids also talked him into documenting the build on YouTube, a skill he's picking up right alongside fiberglass repair. And the Herter's won't be his last project. He's already got a 1979 Taylor DayCruiser jetboat waiting for hull repairs, and admits he came close to bringing home an old Grady-White on a recent family trip to New Hampshire. Matt retired about a year ago, and at this rate, he jokes he may need to go back to work just to keep the boat projects funded.

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