SJX Jet Boats are hand crafted & custom made
Every single SJX Jet Boat starts from sheets of aluminum and is then transformed into the best shallow water jet boat on the water. We construct our jet boats to endure what shallow waters have to offer. SJX Jet Boats are built with the customers’ use in mind. We know what you want because we are customers ourselves.
Our Jet Boats are designed and constructed with the intention of creating a shallow water aluminum jet boat that will last beyond the expectations of our customers.
We use 1/4″ materials in the areas that have the greatest potential for impact. The remaining parts of the boat are made with a lighter material to provide what we call our “heavy-duty, lightweight construction”.
There’s a lot that you have to factor in when designing an aluminum boat. The primary factor is durability.
As far as our R&D goes, we never stop testing the boats. We are always testing new products, always trying new things on the boats, always trying to make them better. All R&D is personally conducted by our founder and owner, Steve Stajkowski. He does the design changes and testing. We go out and use GPS. We flowmeter the fuel. We monitor decibel readings versus RPMs. If it is something on the exterior of the hull, we want to go out and try to rip it off. In essence, we’re trying to see if we can destroy that product by abusing it. The majority of our pictures and videos are us testing the boats, trying to beat the product up, put it to the test before we ever consider releasing it to the public. Once it has passed our battery of tests, we send the boat to Alaska and Craig Compeau pushes it to the limit in the Alaskan wilderness. After he has tested it, I fly up and then we both test it. Once we both give it the thumbs up it is ready to be added to the boat and released to the consumer.
If you build it too rigid it will crack. If you don't build it rigid enough it will crack. Put 1000 pounds of weight in a boat and then you go through the waves. It's going to flex. After years of that type of use it will fester cracks. Something has to give if it is not built properly. Over the years I had seen that skip welding was a common practice in the aluminum boat industry. 90% of the time if there was a failure in the structure of the boat it would be a crack at either the start or stop of a weld.
Through our R&D testing, we discovered it just made more sense for us to have a continuous weld. It would never give an opportunity to start a crack in the support system of the structure. ALL the hull stiffener bracing box runners are full-length welded in the boat. Typically, all the other manufacturers in the aluminum boat industry are still skip welding boats. They are still having warranty claims. You cannot guarantee an aluminum hull for life with skip welds. They will come back. With the solid weld, you can make that guarantee. It did not make any sense to deal with warranty work when it came to the cracking of hulls. It is more time consuming and costs more to build boats with continuous welds, but we know when our boats reach our customers, they have a jet boat with a hull that will not quit on them.
From the beginning of the design phase of the SJX, we have used CAD systems to help us optimize metal usage as well as design custom extrusions to make the boat, not only stronger but more user friendly. We have nine exclusive extrusions for our boats that no other manufacturer has: from grab rails to bumpers, to receiver sockets, hull stiffeners, and hatch channel and others. We designed them and they are exclusively available on SJX boats
We are always happy to answer any questions you may have about our boat models.