This will be my first buy.........should I go rivet or weld. I’ll be fishing Marine Creek, Eagle Mountain, and some rivers around DFW........

welded, but check all of the welds for cracks

My 58-year-old aluminum boat has welded seams, and has never had any cracked welds. The seats and bottom ribs are riveted, and a few of the rib rivets have leaked. I just fill it with water on a dry concrete driveway and see where the leaks drop, mark them with a Sharpie and flip it over and dab some JB Weld over the leaky rivets, and it's good to go for another year. I would prefer a welded seam hull.

But, my boat is probably built of aluminum twice as thick as a current production boat. Pics in this section under My Dad's 1959 12-Foot Boat. IslandJim

Myself and the group of guys I hunt with are hard on our boats. Real hard.
I run a welded boat (since 90) and it is still rock solid as far as welds go. It's had a 25ho O/B or a long-tail mud motor on it most of it's life. The floor is buckled and beat up but doesn't leak.
My buddies (3 of them) run boats with rivets. They also have held up well with O/B motors. If they have had an issue with a rivet, we grind the rivet out and put a bolt in it with a piece of inner-tube for a washer and then put some silicone around it.
Point - don't be afraid of a riveted boat. Easy fix if a rivet pops and most people aren't going to abuse their stuff like we do so it's probably a non-issue.

Never owned a welded jon. I know that modding riveted jons are a heck of a lot easier. Had an 81 ouchita that had 5 rivets leak in 2015. I used an epoxy designed to seal them, took less then 10 minutes to do.

I like riveted because they are lighter, easier to mod, can add more mods because of light weight, requires less horsepower, easy to pull over sand bars etc. Great rigs.

This EPOXY works wonders and last forever. Some guys line the entire bottom of their jons with it. I just dab a little around the leaking rivet, it acts like penetrating oil, then sets up. It remains flexiable, so it never cracks. Tough stuff.

Welded.