1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: One-Mile Ray Searchlight

Before we can install the headliner, all of the electrical systems in the ceiling of the aft deck hardtop have to be done. The basic wiring in the hardtop is finished. Next I have to assemble and install the One-Mile Ray Searchlight.

I had this searchlight rechromed way back in 2009. The parts have been sitting in a box at my house ever since.

The chrome is like-new but the wiring needs help

 

New #10 wire should do the trick

The searchlight is assembled…ready to go to the boat

That’s a good looking 50-year old searchlight

Next, I redrilled the hole for the searchlight controls

Way back when we were prepping the aft deck hardtop for paint, we bonded the no-longer pretty mahogany searchlight base to the hardtop, then fiberglassed and filleted it so it’s a permanent feature. Chris Craft used varnished mahogany, which is more maintenance than I was willing to do. With a new fiberglass skin covering the original searchlight control hole, I had to redrill it to install the searchlight.

The headliner installer has also been busy installing track bases 1/2″ below surfaces like the searchlight base on the underside of the hardtop. When the 1/2″ tall tracks and headliner are installed, the headliner should be on the same plane as the mahogany block that the searchlight controls attach to. But as I was drilling the hole for the searchlight, I noticed that the big mahogany block was moving.

That looks funny

The black glue they used to attach the blocks to the frames has broken loose. Also, I noticed that where the glue broke, the frame underneath is painted white. That’s fine for sealing the wood, but glue doesn’t bond well to unsanded, painted surfaces.

Pushed back up into place

This is going to be more complicated than I’d imagined. Instead of pushing up, I pulled down.

Well…that’s a lot of rock-hard glue that mostly wasn’t stuck to anything!

I knocked the block of glue off with a scraper

As you can see, there was only one place where the block of glue had adhered to the mahogany.

That’s a lot of glue

I don’t know if that’s polyester or epoxy filler thickened with microballoons or fumed silica or…who knows what. But there sure is a lot of it.

Nice, moldy mess

This scrap piece of original marine plywood will make a better spacer than glue

Same 1/2″ thickness

I’ll hit that with a grinder to knock off the mold, dirt, and paint

The plywood here is surprisingly solid. I’ll saturate it with epoxy when I glue and screw all of this back together.

New spacer fits well

Test fitting the mahogany blocks

Parts are fitted and sanded…ready for epoxy

US Composites epoxy and 2:1 no-blush hardener should be better than the original glue

After thoroughly wetting out all bond surfaces with epoxy, I added wood flour and fumed silica to make a thick glue that I spread over everything. Then I screwed the whole thing together.

Glued and screwed in place

The headliner installer will have to redo the headliner track spacers now that the searchlight base blocks are in a different position.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Antennas