1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Aft Stateroom Walls VI

The aft stateroom is coming together pretty quickly. It may not seem like it since my posts covering the wall installations are spread out over many weeks. But since I can only work on the boat on weekends, and each trip to the yard and back takes two hours out of each day, it really has been coming together in a relatively small number of working hours. This time, I got another one of the aft stateroom en suite head walls installed.

The Plan

The wall and corner piece that get installed today

SketchUp is a slick CAD application, and even slicker since the basic version I use is free. After laying out the walls on the floor of the drawing (i.e. in 2D), you grab the walls and pull them up to make the 3D model. In the pic above that I exported from the model, I left the wall I’m installing today in 2D to preserve the corner and door frame details.

Zoom in to see door details

In the larger plan pix above, this area looks fuzzy grey. But that’s because of all the dimension details that are packed into the space that you can see when you zoom in close. I’ll eventually make the door frame/pocket piece in the close-up above out of solid mahogany. For now, getting the walls in is the priority.

First, cut the top to fit the overhead, then sand off the ICA base coat clear

I sanded off the base coat so the epoxy I use to wet out the area will saturate the wood. I’m using the same 1/4″-20 stainless bolts with nyloc nuts as I used on the first walls I installed, and I’m gluing the joints all around using epoxy thickened with wood flour and cabosil.

Pocket screw holes for the floor joint

Gotta love the Kreg R3 Jr pocket screw jig.

The next step involved a bit of panel tai chi to put the wall into position. It’s challenging moving a pre-finished African mahogany (ie pretty) 3/4″ plywood wall (ie heavy) that’s cut to fit within 1/8″ of the plywood decking overhead, when the 3″ tall frames the panel must attach to are spaced 16″ apart…oh, and sticky epoxy has been applied to very specific areas on the top, bottom, and sides of the panel. You can’t bump the panel into anything or you damage the beautiful wood AND get epoxy all over. So, lift, tilt, move gently into position while rotating back to near-vertical. Then, just as there’s no more space for your fingers to hold on the outside edge because the panel is almost touching the hull, give it a final twist back to vertical as the wetted out frame and floor glue joints slide home.

Hence, panel tai chi.

Bolted and glued to the overhead frame

Note Chris Craft’s use of mahogany frames with zinc chromate-primed steel plates screwed to them for strength. I believe that thru-bolting the steel plate to the frame and the 3/4″ plywood wall, with thickened epoxy enhancing the bond, makes a much stronger assembly.

Prepping the solid mahogany corner piece

I grind out a small trench in each corner to ensure a tight fit, then drill pilot holes and countersink for the screws that attach the corner piece to the plywood panels.

I also sanded off the ICA base coat from top to bottom at the corner joint

Next, wet out the plywood with straight epoxy

Harbor Freight acid shop brushes are cheap and work well for wetting out plywood edges with epoxy. After wetting out the plywood and corner piece with epoxy (3x on the plywood, since the ripped edge really drinks up the glue), I mixed up another batch and thickened it with the wood flour/cabosil mix and applied it to the joint area.

Another corner piece installed

Looking good!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing The Last Aft Stateroom Walls

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fitting the Aft Stateroom Walls

With the rough cut aft stateroom wall panels back from clear coating at the paint shop, it’s time to fit them to the boat.

I’m all giddy.

Cutting stringer notches without scratching the wood

That ICA base coat clear is some tough stuff. The plastic base on my Makita jig saw glides right over the top.

Nice notches, and no scuffs on the veneer

First trial fit = panel tai chi

After cutting the panels more precisely to the height of the ceiling, the next step is to figure out how to  get the panel into position between the frames overhead without bumping into the frame and the standpipe below. After tipping and flipping the panel this way and that, I finally figured out the order of operations to get it close to where it’s supposed to go.

A little tight at the top…gotta trim a bit

So, I repeat the panel tai chi in reverse, trim the top a bit, and do the panel tai chi again to check the fit.

Stringer notches need some refining

Again, repeat the panel tai chi…

The closer it gets, the smaller the trimming gets

More panel tai chi…

Niiice

Good fit!

And pretty wood…too bad this will be the inside of the hanging locker.

Big, irregular gap between the panel and the hull frame

Chris Craft just screwed the original panels straight to the frames, inducing warp in the panel even when the cabinetry in the room had square corners. I prefer not to induce warp in the panel, since that’ll make my joinery work all the more challenging. Since I’m pretty much guessing on all of this, the easier the better! I’ll make spacers out of scrap plywood so the panels stay nice and square.

Good gap at the top that I’ll fill with scrap aluminum plate

Next up: the washer and dryer cabinet wall

There were fewer fancy tai chi moves to get this panel into place, since there wasn’t a standpipe to deal with.

Gotta knock a bit off the top

The panel is laid over a bit, so once I cut the top off it should slide right up into place.

And a bit more

Practice makes perfect…or pretty close

After some lessons learned on the first panel, the stringer cutouts were much more accurate on this second one.

Real life vs the plan

I transferred the dimensions from the interior concept drawings to the floor, but hadn’t accounted for irregularities in the frames or the thickness of the welds that kept the panel from lining up with the transferred lines once the panels were square to the floor. There’s plenty of width for the washer and dryer, though, so the 1/2″ shift to the right is no problem at all.

Repeat the process for the head wall

There was all kinds of panel tai chi going on when I fit that panel on the starboard side. The washer, dryer, and jet bath boxes are seriously in the way, but there’s no other way to get this done. Fortunately, by the third panel I was getting pretty good.

Big gaps between this  starboard-side panel and the hull frame, too

I got walls!!!

With the fitting done, I did some more panel tai chi and pulled them all out to seal the edges that face the hull.

Edges sealed with West epoxy

And because the panel faces were clear coated, little drips of epoxy cleaned right up with alcohol on a rag.

More edge sealing with epoxy

Leaving epoxy on the edges to cure overnight

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fitting the Aft Stateroom Walls II

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Windows

Like the exhaust system, the windows are another seemingly unrelated item that had to be attended to before final primer or paint could be applied to the hull. In particular, the aft stateroom portholes needed some work.

Chris Crafts came with cast aluminum portlights and on the larger Roamers they’re screwed into 3/4″ marine plywood that surrounds the porthole in the hull. The plywood around two of my portholes was severely rotted from where the original teak deck had rotted. The other pieces of ply were in very good condition, but the paint was old and cracking…they could use a freshening.

While removing the plywood pieces though, I discovered a problem. Chris Craft had used butyl tape to bed the portlights, which pretty much came off with the portlights. But when I removed the plywood I found another tar-like material used as a bedding compound for the plywood.  The primer in the window openings covered about an 1/8″ of that tar-like material that was stuck to the inside edge of the aluminum. When I removed the plywood the bedding compound and primer came with it, revealing a slightly corroded aluminum edge in spots around the porthole and some places where the corrosion had crept under the new primer while the boat lay fallow during the paperwork SNAFU. Better to find it now and fix it right than to have the paint fail prematurely a couple of years down the road.

Plywood porthole surround in good condition

In the pic above, you can see the bedding compound Chris Craft used to seal the plywood. The wood itself is in good shape, needing only a light sanding and fresh coat of paint.

All the plywood came down easily

I expected a real fight from the fasteners, which are hardened steel self-tapping screws that are threaded into aluminum. All but a few came out very easily though.

Some of the frames weren’t so nice.

This frame was immediately below the hole in the teak deck. All of the water that fell on the deck would have gone past this frame on its way to the bilge.

Nothing a little Git Rot won’t fix!!!

Slight delamination…

Even rotten plywood works as a pattern

I saved all of the original plywood that was still sound from the demolition phase back in 2007. The “new” porthole surrounds are made from what used to be the galley bulkhead, 44 year-old very high quality plywood that just needs a good sanding.

New porthole surround coated with US Composites 645 epoxy

Edge sealed and water resistant

After the first coat, I went back and sanded the frames then hit them with one more coat of resin. The next step was to clean up the inner edges of the aluminum portholes and prepare them for paint.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Windows II

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Longboarding and Final Touch-ups on the Hull

With the exhaust system out of the way (for now), we focused on final longboarding and other detail work on the hull. Since I don’t want to make any cuts in the paint once it’s done, this means I have to drill out all of the holes for hardware and tap as necessary. For other holes in the hull sides, like thruhulls, I used an air deburring tool to remove excess filler. Then I applied Awlgrip Max Cor CF aluminum primer to the bare spots of aluminum inside the bores. This should help ensure that there is a continuous coating film from the coatings inside to the outside paint job, which in theory should help reduce the possibility of aluminum oxide forming and creeping under the paint, causing it to fail prematurely.

Stbd nav light cutout all cleaned out

aft bilge and shower pump thruhulls

Main engine room bilge pump outlet.

Stern light cutout

The original stern light was made of chromed pot metal that had corroded. I found a good, proper vintage replacement on ebay that was chromed bronze rather than pot metal, but it turned out to be slightly larger than the original. So it took quite a bit more work with the deburring tool to open up the cutout so it would fit. Once it was big enough that the light fixture would fit, I had to make it just a wee bit bigger in all dimensions to account for the thickness of the primer and paint we’ll apply.

Because aluminum oxide forms immediately when aluminum is exposed to atmospheric moisture and builds up over time, I wanted to reduce the amount of time the aluminum was exposed. As soon as I finished opening up each hole, I brushed some Max Cor CF inside.

Awlgrip Max Cor CF in each hole to protect the aluminum

Low spots on the hull got a touch of fairing compound

There were a dozen or so low spots we found when longboarding the hull, which we initially faired back in 2009. So we mixed up a small batch of homemade epoxy fairing compound thickened with cabosil and 3M microballoons. The base coating is Awlgrip 545 white that we applied in May 2009, so you can see the filler in the pic above and below because it’s slightly yellow from the 4:1 fast hardener we used.

A few more low spots at the bow

The flare of the bow had a low spot along a weld

Former port exhaust outlet hole

Former stbd exhaust outlet hole

Now all we have to do is longboard the patched areas and apply some Awlquik sprayable fairing compound in spots. Once that’s longboarded smooth, we’ll be ready for the final coat of Awlgrip 545 primer. Gotta move on this…summer is over and the cold winter is coming.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Windows

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Exhaust III, Decommissioning the OE System

Today I’m documenting the final step of the major exhaust system work: yanking out the old system. While it might seem like I’m jumping around unfocused, messing with the exhaust before the hull is painted, the simple fact is that I don’t want to cut, grind, drill or use epoxy resin around anything that’s already painted with “the shiny.” The exhaust system had to be done before we put the last coat of Awlgrip 545 primer on the hull. If the mechanic I fired in July 2013 had installed the engines as promised back in September 2012, I wouldn’t be dealing with this now.

The OE exhaust system consisted of two 15-foot sections of 5-inch Schedule 40 pipes welded in from the transom to the engine room bulkhead. Inside the ER, there were two large steel “suitcase” mufflers, all of which had pretty much rotted out after 15 years of service. When we got the boat in 2007, she’d been on the hard since the mid-’80s. She’d only been running on the water for a decade and a half before ending up on purgatory row. So, rather than just go with the exhaust system that Chris Craft used, which obviously had its shortcomings, I wanted to do something better, longer lasting, and quieter. The factors that led me to go with side exhaust and waterlift  mufflers were:

Noise reduction–I’ve always had Detroit-powered boats and the sound of the exhaust was something I used to like…but not for long days at the helm. Even my other boat–a 1968 427 Ford-powered Commander 42–sounds wonderful…for about 15 minutes. After that it’s pretty much just noise. Granted, the Cummins 6CTAs in the Roamer will be a lot quieter than Detroits, but they’re hardly quiet. The waterlift mufflers are going to make for a quiet ride. In solving one problem though, another pops up.

Backpressure–I’d have to run 15 feet of 8″ pipe out the back on each side to get the backpressure where Cummins wants it. By going out the side and using an auxiliary raw water outlet so it doesn’t all have to go through the muffler, I can stick with a 6″ system and keep the backpressure down.

Space– the OE 5″ pipes took up roughly 12″ of width from each side of the aft stateroom. 8″ pipes would have pushed the wasted width to about 30 inches, and the pipes are 18 inches above the aft stateroom floors. When you add in air space around the pipes, you lose a huge amount of storage volume by running the exhaust out the transom. And finally,

Bang for the buck–the price delta between 6″ exhaust parts and 8″ is significant.

While taking out the old exhaust system, I found some more reasons why long aluminum pipes out the transom weren’t such a great idea.

Transom exhaust hole

In the pic above, you can see the “pipe within a pipe” consisting of the original 5″ exhaust pipe with the 3.5″ replacement I installed inside it for the Lehman 120 engines I originally planned to use for the boat. Let me know if anybody’s interested in some nearly new 3.5″ 6061 aluminum pipe…or some Lehman 120s with Twin Disc MG-502 gears.

Aluminum patch cutting

One very nice thing about aluminum is that you can use common woodworking tools to cut it. I do find, though, that metal cutting jigsaw blades last longer than ones intended for wood.

Grind, tack and weld

My Miller Trailblazer 280 and Spoolmatic 30A worked real well for welding the patches in.

Port patch done

Starboard patch done

Old pipes out the window

Next!

I used a carbide blade on my beater Skilsaw to make the initial cuts to get the pipe down to a manageable size, since carbide cuts through aluminum like a hot knife through butter. Then I followed up with my Harbor Freight sawsall to finish the cuts. The HF saw is noisy, but what do you expect for $20? With good Freud blades it does a good enough job and is still going strong after 7 years.

Incidentally, the pic above shows the half of the pipe that’s still connected to the boat at the engine room bulkhead. It’s also connected to the hull frame at the cut point. Since that welded brace midway along the pipe is behind extensive cabinetry with the original interior and the OE fuel tank, it’s got to be a really big job gaining access if you ever have to…say…replace a rotten pipe. You can’t just cut the two ends and pull the pipe out the transom.

OE exhaust is out

Extensive pitting in the OE exhaust pipe

The shot above shows the interior of the exhaust pipe that was welded to the ER bulkhead. The pipe is rotated so what was the bottom is on the right side in the pic. You can see the extensive pitting in the metal, especially where raw water would have been flowing when the engines were running. My theory is that the aluminum was attacked by copper ions from the exhaust risers on the Super Seamaster twin turbo engines that I pulled out of the boat back in 2008. Some of those pits looked extremely deep…

White spots on the outside?!?!?

Like the rest of the hull, Chris Craft coated the exterior of the exhaust pipes with bitumastic and silver paint. Out of curiosity, I looked at the outside and noticed three spots where there was a wee bit of white powder, AKA aluminum oxide, which is what aluminum turns into when it corrodes.

Houston, I think we’ve got a problem.

My steel pick when straight through the pipe with very little effort. One of the holes was big enough to put a 1/4-20 bolt through it; another was big enough for a 3/16″ screw.

Auxiliary exhaust ports?

When I saw this I had to laugh, thinking back to the fellow who sold the boat to me when he said all it needs is engines and a paint job.

With the OE exhaust system off the boat and the new side exhaust flanges at the paint shop, I focused on wrapping up the final work to get the hull ready for “the shiny.”

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Longboarding and Final Touch-ups on the Hull

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Exhaust II

After working out the method on the port exhaust flange, making the second one was much quicker on the starboard side.

Hull is ready for the flange.

First, cut circles of 1810 biaxial

I’m using four layers of 1810 biaxial for the flange. Since the Centek exhaust components appear to be no thicker than one or two wetted out layers, the exterior flange should be the toughest part of the assembled piece.

My Wiss 1225 shears make the cutting easier

These scissors make a world of difference when it comes to cutting tough fabrics. They look like they’ve been through a big boat refit, but they’re still cutting well…even after chewing through that Kevlar we used to make the bullet proof cabin top.

The system will eventually look sorta like this

Wetting out the 1810 biaxial for the flange

Once the fiberglass is fully wetted out, I lift it into place on the hull. I’ve already put the blue tape around the hull opening and applied mold release wax carefully to it so the finished part will pop off easily.

Two layers down, two to go.

I wrapped the flange layer inside the pipe on the bottom. On the top, where the pipe sticks out a bit, I applied another strip of wetted out 1810 on the inside that extends out and joins with the outer layer. The finished part should be quite robust.

Once again, I hot coated with homemade fairing compound.

The fairing compound is the same US Composites 635 thin resin thickened with a 1:3 ratio of cabosil and microballoons that we used elsewhere on the boat.

Initially I liked US Composites epoxy, but the more I use the stuff the less I’m impressed. While their 4:1 fast hardener will smoke in the pot in no time on a hot day, it takes way too long to set and a whole lot longer to cure than West System. With US Composites, you can sand the fairing compound the next day IF it’s warm enough overnight. With West in identical conditions, you can start sanding in two hours. If I had to do it all over again, I would have saved a ton of time and money and just bought a barrel of West resin from the start.

The one plus point for US Composites is that if you’re wetting out plywood edges or otherwise trying to seal up a piece of wood, the fact that it takes forever to set and cure seems to allow it to wick in further than West. That’s just a guess though.

Anyway, the following day I popped out the two flanges and continued fitting them.

Nice fit to the hull curve

Before popping the parts off the hull, I drilled the holes so the flanges would bolt up exactly as they were molded. Even without bolts holding the parts in place, they fit right up to the hull.

Nice fit but kinda furry

Ground to a rough finish and ready for the Boatamalans

I used a 5 gallon bucket to trace out the circle…the same bucket I used to outline the 1810 fiberglass fabric. Then I hit it with a grinder and sanded back to the line.

New exhaust system is roughed out.

I need to weld up some 6061 angle and make a platform for the muffler, but otherwise the exhaust system is ready for the paint shop.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Exhaust III, Decommissioning the OE System

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft enclosure windows

With the prep work quickly progressing toward the day when we apply shiny Awl Craft 2000, I started cutting templates for the windows. I’d settled on a window manufacturer in Washington State that uses powder coated aluminum frames. This manufacturer’s design uses a clamp ring on the inside of the boat, with very precisely cut screws that thread into the back-side of the outside window frame. Since there are no screw holes on the outside, which are a common source of leaks, the clamp ring design is far better than most other window designs.

The one hitch with the aluminum-framed windows is that the tolerances are pretty tight: ± 1/16″. For all intents and purposes, there is no way to install these frames onto a structure that isn’t close to perfectly flat. Last week, I discovered that the welder who built my aft enclosure put twist into three of the six panels that have window openings, which induced an arc in the panels along the width of the window openings. The smallest arc had 1/8″ of deflection and the worst had 1/2″ , but all three were more than the 1/16″ tolerance the aluminum window frames could accommodate. This is in addition to the one panel he welded in the wrong place that was so bad I had to cut it off and relocate it a few months ago. Highly paid, incompetent “craftsmen” have been the bane of this refit since Day One…

After determining the aluminum framed windows wouldn’t work, I considered Eisinglass but decided against it for a couple of reasons. The first was that the enclosure was obviously designed with windows in mind, so it would look cobbled together to use Eisinglass. Also, since the whole structure is bonded and faired to the hard top, the last thing I wanted to do was start cutting bits and pieces off or doing other major modifications to already completed work.

Next I looked into fiberglass window frames, but the quote came back at $1300 each (vs roughly $350 each for aluminum) and I need six of them! The fiberglass window manufacturer did say, though, that his windows using tempered safety glass can be formed to an arc. So that got me thinking about a DIY solution that might be just as good and save a bit of money.

Two 20′ pultruded fiberglass I-beams provide the window frame material.

The FRP I-beams measure 2″ x 4″ and are very lightweight and rigid. Step one was to cut the 20′ I-beam into pieces just a bit longer than the window opening dimensions.

Pultruded I-beams cut and marked for size

Slicing the I-beam length-wise yields two T-beams

FRP pultrusions come with radiused inside corners

The radiused inside corners would not allow the T-beam frames to sit tight to the aluminum aft enclosure window openings, which have tight 90* corners. With a little milling, I knocked the radiused corners off.

A Freud top-bearing mortising bit on my Shop Smith made quick work of removing the radius.

With the pultrusions cut into usable T-beams, the next step was to dry fit, mark and cut each piece to make up the horizontal and vertical window frame pieces.

FRP window frames, rough cut and ready for bonding.

Vertical piece on the left, horizontal piece on the right, all rough sanded for bonding.

Nice, tight fit

Kerf cuts in the T-beam reflect the worst arc in the enclosure panel.

The shot above shows the solution to the worst arc the SMIB* welder put in the aft enclosure panel. The T-beam is tight to the window opening from the front edge to about halfway back, after which the window frame and panel curve in. You can see a 1/2″ gap at the lower right corner of the window opening. The arc begins to the left where the first kerf cut is. The kerf cuts allow the outside FRP panel to match the arc of the aluminum panel while still retaining the two-surface bonding area afforded by the T-channel shape. Tempered safety glass can easily be warped to fit and urethane will hold it all together.

*pejorative slang abbreviation for Southern Maryland InBred.

You can never have too many clamps…I need more.

I used US Composites thin epoxy resin thickened with West System 404 adhesive filler to bond the T-channel frames to the window openings. Wooden scraps helped spread the clamping force over wide areas. Covering the wood with shrink tape first helps ensure that the clamp spreaders will release from the epoxy after it kicks.

One down, five to go.

Outside view; two down, four to go.

I removed the clamps and blocks once the epoxy started to take a set, then quickly applied a small fillet around the exterior perimeter of the frame. The fillets are made of the same home-brew fairing compound we used on the cabin top and elsewhere on the boat. It’s based on the same US Composites epoxy resin and hardener as the adhesive, so the fillets make a perfect chemical bond to the adhesive epoxy that squeezed out of the clamped joint. Instead of West 404 adhesive filler, which is brutal to sand, I use a  2:1 ratio of 3M microballoons and Cabosil in the fairing compound to make for relatively easy sanding. The fillets make for a cleaner, more integrated install, just like they did on the cabin top to deck joint and at the helm station dash pod. Fillets also eliminate the seams where dirt can collect.

Unfortunately, this most recent detour from “the plan” took almost an entire week to identify, brainstorm and resolve, and everything else was on hold until I worked it out. I’ve only got so much vacation time I can take in a given year, and I blew five days of it fixing this latest SMIB-inspired problem. Another down-side is that we wanted slider windows for better ventilation but they’re impossible in twisted frames. On the upside, the total out-of-pocket cost for aft enclosure windows just dropped by a significant margin since my labor is free (of course).

Ah well, it’s a boat…they’re all about the compromises, I guess. It sure would be nice, though, to have competent craftsmen whose work is commensurate with the $$$ they charge. So far, the only workers who consistently perform to a high standard are the boatamalan fairing and paint crew. Speaking of which…

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Painting “the shiny” on the cabin top and decks. 🙂

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Prepping and Priming the Aft Enclosure

My painter, fairing crew boss, and chief Boatamalan informs me that there are exactly seven “paint days” remaining before our Roamer 46 is painted with the shiny, non-skid and accent stripes…top to bottom.

Seven paint days… After five years, I’m ready for it.

Of course, since  we only work on the boat on weekends seven paint days works out to be about a month. So, it looks like we’re not going to make the end-of-May 2013 target, but we’re not far off. Before the paint days can begin, though, we’ve got to finish up the priming. And the last section of the boat that remains unprimed is the new (in 2008) aluminum aft deck enclosure.

Last weekend, we got ‘er done.

Rounding welded corners and sanding off mill scale

It was nice to see the boat in natural sunlight while I was transforming Tent Model IX once again. The aluminum to FRP hardtop fillets turned out nice.

This vertical welded seam creates a subtle but hard corner on the outside of the aft enclosure panel.

Even with the seam weld ground down and the panel sanded, there still is a bump you can easily feel.

If you can feel a bump, it’ll really stand out when it’s painted with “the shiny” AwlCraft 2000 Matterhorn White.

We mixed up some fairing compound and laid it out on both sides of the seam high spot.

I’ve found that US Composites 635 epoxy and their 4:1 hardener (their fastest one) takes a lot more time to cure than West System. Production time costs, so at this late stage of the game we’ve switched to West System and their fast hardener so we can mix up epoxy + cabosil (40%) + 3m microballoons (60%) fairing compound, apply it and sand it just an hour or two later.

Another lesson learned: buying a 55-gallon barrel of West System at the start of this project would have been significantly cheaper and faster than ordering US Composites in multi-gallon kits. If I knew when the project started what I know now…

While the fairing compound cured, we kept attacking the aluminum with sanders.

All of those nooks and crannies are a PITA! Once the sanding was done, I hit all of the corners, seams and welds with a wire wheel on my Makita sander. Meanwhile, the guys longboarded the fairing compound we applied around the welded seam on the aft panel.

With all of the longboarding, sanding and wire brushing done, we applied Alumaprep and then Alodine.

Next came the Awl Grip Max Cor aluminum primer.

The green stuff is Awl Grip Max Cor.

The vertical line of Max Cor is where just a hint of a weld high spot remained in the aluminum, but the guys faired it out so well that I can’t feel any high spot at all.

Max Cor is the replacement for the previous Awl Grip aluminum primer that was available when we first got the boat. The old stuff was yellow and didn’t stink anywhere near as bad as this new stuff, which is also 25% more expensive. Everybody in the tent had space suits, full face masks and VOC filters on, and the exhaust fan filters turned green in no time!

We didn’t fully prime the entryway with Max Cor because it’s actually coated in fiberglass.

The welds for the aft entryway are on the inside of the panels, which leaves an exposed seam without welds on the vertical surfaces you see here. We cut the door out after welding it all together, so the door and the opening would hold their natural, curved shape. Welding the exposed seams on the vertical threshold pieces would put a lot more heat into the panels and, because it’s aluminum, might cause warping — the curved door that fits the curved panel might not anymore.

We don’t anticipate any movement on the seams, but just putting fairing compound into a seam crack would just beg for the compound to crack in the future. So, we mixed up some West System thickened with 404 adhesive and wetted out the aluminum before applying wetted out 12oz fiberglass cloth over the seams in both vertical threshold panels.  The 404 keeps the fiberglass firmly attached to the aluminum, and the fiberglass will not crack the way filler might.

That’s a lotta green.

Fillets at every joint and seam.

The challenge was–how to apply Alumaprep and Alodine (both acids) and water to the bare aluminum without having any of the liquids wick in between the stitch welded aft enclosure framing and exterior panels. If any liquids got into the seams, there’s no way we could prime within the window stipulated on the Awl Grip product labels. After talking about tape and a few other ideas, we settled on mixing up more homemade epoxy fairing compound and putting fillets at every joint and seam. It was time consuming, but the fillets preclude liquids from entering the seams, and the primer film is now continuous over the entire aluminum surface, inside and out. Since aluminum oxide can travel very far under primer when there’s a break in the film, this approach should ensure a very long life sans corrosion for this enclosure and its paint job.

Nice fillets at the welded panel joints.

The aft-most panel turned out very nice and smooth.

After two coats of Max Cor, we waited 1-1/2 hours, then broke out the Awl Quik and a five-gallon pressure pot paint rig.

That hard welded seam has just sorta magically disappeared.

The fairing crew from Weaver Boatworks that’s moonlighting on weekends doing my boat…they sure do nice work.

This is turning out just like I envisioned with my cardboard mockups in 2008!

And with that, the aft enclosure was in primer!

I’m all giddy! 🙂

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fillets & Final Touches on the Aft Deck Enclosure

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Priming the Cabin Top & Dashboard

Wow.

That’s all I can say.

OK…not really 🙂 , but seriously, what a slog it’s been to get to this point.

The last time the cabin top on this Chris Craft Roamer was whole, a consistent color, and shiny (to a degree) would have been sometime in the early to mid-1970s, when the boat was repowered with 534ci SeaMaster twin turbo and intercooled gas engines. The salon hatch for repowers that was collapsed has been rebuilt. The cabin top is now bullet-proof. The helm station sliding door openings are done. And everywhere you would have seen a seam between components, you now see nice fillets and rounded corners.

The problem is, though, that the closer you get to priming anything, the uglier it becomes. With complex construction based in aluminum, marine plywood and fiberglass, then topped with fairing compounds of varying colors and other characteristics, everything gets blurred together when a couple of guys spend days with six-foot longboards sanding down the high spots and making sure that every surface is true. Guide coat after guide coat of black spray paint further uglies up the project until it takes a real trained eye to see the beauty that’s just waiting to POP out for all to see.

Well, on Sunday, April 21, 2013, we got some serious poppin’ done!

Filling pinholes with Awl Grip High Build thickened with cabosil.

Pinholes are unavoidable in a faired fiberglass structure the size of a yacht cabin top.  If you prime and sand, then fill pinholes, you could spend a week getting them all and even then you’d probably miss lots that you wouldn’t see until you painted the boat. My weekend fairing/painting crew used the same technique to fill pinholes on the Roamer that they developed at Weaver Boatworks, where they build multi-million dollar sportfishermen on the other days of the week.

The process involves mixing a bit of cabosil with Awl Grip High Build. It’s hard to describe the consistency, but it’s not mayonaise, peanut butter or any of the other terms generally used to describe fairing compounds. It’s not runny…it holds a bit of shape. Let’s just call it the Boatamalan Secret Recipe. (Boatamalan = Boatyard worker of Guatamalan origin, a joking reference to the fairing crew’s Latin American ancestry). Whatever you call it, this stuff works wonders on pinholes and is applied with squeegees.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe on the dashboard

It’s not pretty when applied with a squeegee, but it won’t matter.

FRP door openings ready for Boatamalan Secret Recipe

Just enough Boatamalan Secret Recipe to fill the pinholes.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe isn’t used for shaping. Its only purpose is to fill pinholes. Where it might take a whole weekend to fill pinholes individually later on, it only takes a few hours using this approach.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe gets squeegeed all over the cabin top.

Smooth and pretty doesn’t matter at this point.

A thin layer of Boatamalan Secret Recipe covers the whole cabin top.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe applied

The next step after squeegeeing Boatamalan Secret Recipe all over is to apply Awl Quik, which is basically a sprayable fairing compound. After taping plastic over all of the openings, we fired up the compressor, put filters in the vent fans, and made the tent stinky!

Awl Quik yellow…not the prettiest color

This is sooo much better than before, when all of the different colors of material made it difficult to see the final shape. Now, all of the lines, fillets and rounded outside corners POP!

Dripping with Awl Quik

The painter applied two coats in rapid succession and then one more for good measure. The idea is to put enough Awl Quik on so we don’t sand through the Awl Quik/High Build layer when we longboard it. If we sand through it, we have to spray another coat and that means waiting another day before we can sand. Since we only work weekends on this project, that means another week will go by before we can spray the final primer–Awl Grip 545.

I’m diggin’ on the fillets at the dashboard.

Much nicer than the OE dirt-catching seam.

Before Awl Quik

After Awl Quik

Windshield base is true, strong and flat where it matters.

Check out those lines!

Beautiful fillets and rounded corners at the bow seat windows.

Don’t mind the runs and rough spots!

We applied two heavy coats of Awl Quik right over the squeegeed High Build and cabosil, so the surface reflects that now. The surface imperfections will sand off easily when we longboard. So long as we don’t sand through the High Build/Awl Quik layer, we’ll be applying 545 next weekend!

The bow seat itself got Awl Quik on the 3rd coat.

The painter needed a place to stand to put the second coat on the cabin top, so he waited to coat the bow seat until the last coat.

Salon window supports in Awl Quik

These supports in the salon window tracks are the only vertical structure over the whole length of the salon window openings. They’re made of mahogany and, from Chris Craft, rely on paint and bedding compound to keep rain water from wicking up the wood and rotting it out. Unfortunately, that approach doesn’t last too long.

We made new supports out of mahogany, but then fiberglassed them into place. Not only is this a more integrated approach than the original, it makes it virtually impossible for rain to ever affect the wood. The entire window channel is now fiberglass covered with Awl Quik.

Aft-most salon window opening on the port side.

The dashboard again…just because I love the way it turned out.

And that concludes our tour of the Awl Quik application

Longboarding begins anew next Saturday, bright and early. If we don’t breach the High Build/Awl Quik layer, we’ll have it sprayed in 545 on Sunday.

I’m all giddy! 😉

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Tools of the Trade.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Cabin-top, dashboard & Hardtop Details

Since October 2012, shortly after we resolved the paperwork SNAFU and resumed the project, we’ve been pushing hard every weekend trying to get the Roamer ready for paint. Our target has been to have her painted by the end of May 2013, and we’re close to meeting that deadline.

Making the cabin-top bulletproof was a huge step toward the goal, not only of getting her painted but also making this Roamer better than anything that came out of Chris Craft’s production lines. There was a slight set back when we found the previous repair under the windshield while working on the dashboard area, but it was better to find it then and fix it than to have cracks reappear months or years after she was painted. The helm station door openings to the deck were also challenging, but I was very pleased to see the woodworker and fiberglass crew turn my concept into reality. Fillets on all of the hard inside corners were the last big job in preparation for primer. All that remained was some detail work, and she’s ready for spraying!

The dashboard fillets and original gelcoat are nicely sanded and ready for primer.

With FRP tape covering the seam between these two components and a nice fillet over that, I think this both looks and will function better than the original dirt-collecting seam.

Final FRP at the top of the door openings.

We had to close the gaps between the original fiberglass hardtop and the new sliding door openings. After grinding down the surfaces to be joined, we wetted out 1708 bi-axial cloth with US Composites 635 epoxy, then used clamps to hold some precisely cut scraps of phenolic-faced plywood wrapped in shrink wrap tape and push the fiberglass into exactly the shape we wanted.

A few hours later, the fiberglass was ready to be trimmed and sanded smooth.

No fairing compound is needed when you use this approach. Epoxy doesn’t stick well to the phenolic-faced plywood and shrink wrap tape, so they just pop right off and you’re pretty much ready to go.

Upright-to-hardtop joint is faired

Fillets & rounded corners really help to integrate the new helm door opening to the original Chris Craft lines.

The window drain and channel turned out very nice.

More fillets and rounded corners at the helm doors.

I think the door openings look like something that might have been original to the boat, but then that’s just my opinion. Please comment! I’d rather hear that something looks goofy now than when it’s all in primer! 😉

Fillets and rounds at the base of the helm door opening

Nice transition from the upright bits to the deck, and should be a vast improvement on the original Chris Craft approach that used 1″ quarter-round painted mahogany screwed in place over the seam, with bedding compound to keep the water out.

Fillet material transitions from Awl Fair to epoxy + 3M microballoons + cabosil

Slider door track and pocket

Ready for primer!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Priming the cabin top!