1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing V-berth Head Moldings

I had to take a break from polishing stainless, so I installed some moldings for the v-berth head. This thing is taking forever to get done, in part, because of the scorching hot summer, but also because my painter hasn’t been feeling well recently. Hopefully, we’ll get it painted before autumn sets in and it gets too cold to paint.

The access panel behind the toilet and the hole it fits in need to be squared up

Eureka Zone track saw makes perfectly straight cuts

Just need to take off a smidgeon

The panel is square

I use the rubber spacers that came with the new glass to center the panel in the hole

Harbor Freight’s multi-tool is perfect for squaring up the hole

Squared up well enough and almost ready for moldings

The molding profile

After trimming off more of the panel edges to make room for the molding, it was time to start gluing. Fortunately, the painter came in, finished sanding the first prime coat, then sprayed Awlquik.

First, I wetted out the toilet paper storage space edges with epoxy

I wetted out the back-side of each molding after I did the plywood.

Epoxy thickened with a 30/70 mix of cabosil and wood flour

Apply wood flour-thickened epoxy to the moldings

Rube Goldberg clamping system holds everything in place

Every clamp, stick, screwdriver, scrap of plywood, and sanding pad is absolutely essential to hold the moldings in place

Good squeeze-out means there will be a good bond on the moldings for the toilet paper cabinet

After cleaning up the squeeze-out with a squeegee and a final wipe with alcohol on a rag, I repeated the process for the panel moldings.

Ready for glue

Variation on a trucker’s hitch clamps all of the moldings to the panel

Every stick and piece of string is essential

After the epoxy cures and the clamps come off

Nice glue line

Done!

Now I just need to wait for the painter to show up, finish sanding the Awlquik, and get the head ready for Awlgrip 545 primer.

In the meantime, I’m pushing forward with the exhaust risers.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Exhaust Riser Fit-up

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

When I was last fitting the aft stateroom walls, I made a mistake. I didn’t have my computer with me or a print out of the plan drawings, and it had been a long time since I’d studied them. The panel that I fitted as the aft wall for the washer & dryer closet was, in fact, supposed to be the wall separating the main hanging locker from a narrower locker (for laundry supplies and a clothes hamper below) that is next to the washer & dryer closet.

oops

Fortunately, the aft deck slopes down toward the transom on Chris Craft flush deck boats like mine, and I have to move the panel aft. So all I will have to do is trim some more off the top of the panel to fit it to the shorter space. If I had erred the other way and cut the panel on the short side, it would have been much more difficult adding material back to the panel to make it taller.

Nice plan, but I didn’t add porthole openings for reference

There are a few critical dimensions in the plan, the most important being the hull components since they can’t move. Of course, that includes the porthole openings. Next come the hard parts that need to fit within the hull, like the washer and dryer. Everything else — the walls, hanging lockers, drawers — can be shifted around as needed. Using intuition to figure out where the panel went was a bad idea.

I trimmed the panel where it conveniently fit…in the wrong place

With the panel in the pic above located where I first installed it, the washer & dryer closet is about 5″ wider than the plan, which is based on the actual dimensions the laundry machines require. I could leave it where I put it, which intuitively made sense because it landed between two portholes and would bolt to a frame. But if I do that, the narrow hamper locker would have to go away. The hanging locker would get a bit wider, but I’d have 5″ of inaccessible and unusable space in the washer & dryer closet. I really don’t want to waste the space. Soooo…gotta move that panel.

Laying out new lines to match the plan, which puts the panel…

Right smack dab in the middle of the porthole

OK, before anybody freaks out about the big, curved cutout, keep in mind that this panel is almost entirely out of sight most of the time. On the left side, it’s the inside of the hanging locker. On the right side, it’s the inside of the narrow hanging locker/hamper. It was fairly common for Chris Craft to end up with a similar situation when they built boats. I cut the hole big enough that the porthole will be openable and, if necessary, can be removed for maintenance without too much trouble.

The hanging locker bulkheads, per the plan

Just need the corner pieces

On the principle of making lemon aid out of lemons, I had spent lots of time on the interior concepts during the paperwork SNAFU that finally got resolved in 2012. Once I’d created the basic model and worked out the fundamental stuff, like bulkhead and major wall locations, I started digging into details, one of which was the corner pieces.

Full aft stateroom plan

Chris Craft originally used hard, 90° corners everywhere, driving the screws into solid stock that was bonded to the edges of the panels or with 1″x1″ cleats on the inside corners. This approach ends up with a lot of bung work, which I wanted to avoid where possible. I also wanted round corners. Soooo…

Zoom in a bit to see the component details

In Sketchup, I selected the lines and surface of the corner piece in the red circle above, then copied and pasted it as a separate component.

The corner piece plan

Corner piece (scrap) in real life

The corner pieces turned out very nicely. I’ve sent them off to the paint shop for coating with ICA clear base coat.

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Insulation

In the spirit of jumping around from topic to topic, which is pretty much how the project has been going for the last few months, today I’m writing about insulation.

Yup. From a gantry design to laying out the floors in the aft stateroom to insulation, in three sequential posts. Makes sense, doesn’t it? 😉

Believe it or not, there’s actually some reason to the madness.

Anyway, I remember when we sold our Chris Craft Constellation 52, a mahogany hulled boat, for a Commander 42 in FRP. Oh boy…THAT winter was a lesson in thermodynamics. The old woody was so warm. So I tried my hand at insulating the Commander using a variety of materials, which yielded a variety of different ways NOT to effectively stop unwanted heat transfer. It’s all good, though, because lessons learned on my other boats are helping pave the way on our Roamer. And since the Roamer is an aluminum hulled boat, mastering the heat transfer issue will be mission critical.

I am, after all, a happily married man, and I intend to keep it that way.

So, in the category of things I definitely will not do when insulating the Roamer, we have foam board, Liquid Nails, silver tape, or any other materials sold at big box home improvement centers. Shrink wrap tape, while tenacious when used on shrink wrap, doesn’t hold for more than a few months on foam board insulation. Fiberglass batts are great for insulating… houses. On boats, fiberglass holds water and is just miserable when it inevitably fails.

Fortunately, Chris Craft’s original hull coating was in pretty good shape on our Roamer. I think it was called Bitumastic, a semi-hard tar or asphault-like substance, though I’ve heard others call it coal tar. Either way, as you can see in the pic below from when I was removing the old exhaust pipes, Chris Craft gave it a coat of silver paint to pretty it up, and it really does a terrific job of stopping condensation dead.

Good looking silver-painted Bitumatic…so long as there’s no oil around

Unfortunately, residue from oil mist of the sort that’s common in engine rooms of all but the most fastidiously kept boats pretty much dissolves this petroleum-based insulation in short order. And, really, Bitumastic (or whatever it was called) stops condensation, but it’s not going to keep the missus warm in the middle of winter. As insulation, adding more of it won’t be of any benefit.

So, here’s what I’m thinking for insulation:

All of the ceiling surfaces, including the new aluminum side decks near the helm station, the bullet proof cabin top, the underside of the side decks, and the V-berth will get an inch or two of closed cell spray foam. The thermal insulating properties of spray foam are great, and word has it nothing is better at filling voids and stopping air infiltration. Most of the two-part urethane foams have to be applied when surface temps are 70* or more to get proper expansion, which is why I’m working on getting bulkheads installed now in the middle of winter: chipping away foam insulation to make room for bulkheads sucks, and by the time the weather warms up I’ll be ready to spray the foam.

For the vertical surfaces, I haven’t decided what to do. There’s no exposed aluminum, so condensation isn’t a concern. I could foam the hull, but that would still leave me with cold air in the hull envelope coming into contact with the back-side of all my cabinets. That could cause condensation problems, plus there would be heat loss through the wooden cabinetry panels. To keep the air conditioned (i.e. warm in winter or cool in summer) interior envelope thermally isolated from the unconditioned hull envelope, I’m thinking of using spray contact cement to attach nonwoven fabric insulation to the backside of all of the wall panels and cabinet back panels that face the hull.

The table below summarizes the information I’ve pulled together on the various insulation options. It also estimates Bang for the Buck, which I define as the ratio of R-value to $/ft^2, with a higher number being better. Sorry the table looks goofy; wordpress is notorious for not being table-friendly.

Product	Width (inch)	W (ft)	L (ft)	ft^2	Price	$/ft^2	R-value	Bang for the Buck*	Notes
3m Thinsulate 1″	60	5.00	90	450	$1,018	$2.26	3.8	1.68	polyolefin
3m Thinsulate 2″	60	5.00	90	450	$1,146	$2.55	5.8	2.28	polyolefin
Thermozite	48	4.00	3	12	$12	$1.03	1.3	1.27	polyester
Mountain Mist Buffalo Batt	50	4.17	15	62.5	$28	$0.45	3.0	6.66	Nonwoven polyester fabric
Spray foam on ebay				600	$658	$1.10	6.0	5.47	DIY
Foam it Green				1200	$1,429	$1.19	6.0	5.04	DIY
Tiger Foam				600	$575	$0.96	6.0	6.26	DIY
Icynene ProSeal						$1.25	7	5.6	Pro-applied
* Bang for the Buck is the ratio of R-value to $/ft^2, with a higher number being better

3M Thinsulate is easy to handle and install, hydrophobic, and (relatively speaking) very expensive. Weaver Boatworks uses it, and reportedly so do other luxury boat and car manufacturers, though it’s marketed as acoustic insulation rather than thermal. Still, it has a fair R-value. Thinsulate fabric is a mix of polyester and polypropylene, and it’s the very fine polypropylene fibers that make Thinsulate so much thinner and lighter than other nonwoven fabrics with the same R-value. Polyester nonwoven can yield the same R-values, but it’ll be thicker and heavier. And by heavier, I mean a few ounces per square foot, which falls into the “insignificant” category on a 46′ motor yacht.

Thermozite was another product I found online that some camper enthusiasts seem to like. It uses polyester, but it’s a very thin product that’s foil lined. You might see it on the under-side of your hood, for example. It’s less than half the price per foot^2 as Thinsulate, but the R-value is so low that it really drags down the Bang for the Buck.

Which brings us to a surprising entry: Buffalo Batts, which quilters and other crafty sorts use when they need a 1.5″ lofted batt that doesn’t absorb water. It’s a nonwoven polyester fabric, but not faced like Thermozite or Thinsulate. Frankly, I have no idea if a vapor barrier facing is necessary, and the bang for the buck on this stuff is outstanding: the per-inch R-value is less than Thinsulate, but not by a huge amount. And the price is excellent. I’m leaning toward Buffalo Batts as the material I’d use on the backside of all the vertical walls.

But back to the spray foam. Tiger Foam is clearly the best bang for the buck, assuming manufacturer’s coverage data is accurate for all of the products. Tiger Foam’s product info page indicates an initial R-value of 7 and an aged R-value of 6, and the loss of aged R-value has a huge impact on Bang for the Buck. Icynene Proseal, by comparison, claims to be an advanced new formula that’s set the high bar for the industry with an aged R-value of 7, but they don’t sell DIY kits. There’s a potential cost savings of $450 for DIY vs having a pro spray Icynene Proseal. Then again, I know from spray painting that there’s a reason you pay the guy with the magic hand who can lay it on just so. Whether DIY or pro-applied, I’ll be taping and covering the whole boat to protect shiny paint and pretty wood. But, on the other hand, I do like DIY experiences, especially when they work out well.

What a conundrum. If anybody has any thoughts, experience, or suggestions, please feel free to comment.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Turning Mahogany Plywood Into Aft Cabin Walls

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Transom Steps

The transom steps are anodized cast aluminum, but the anodizing started to go off and, as I understand it, re-anodizing never turns out as nice as the first time around. So, I opted to blast them, prime with Awlgrip Max Cor CF, then hot coat with 545 and Awlgrip Matterhorn White leftover from when we painted the nonskid. Having gotten the aluminum portholes,  hatch, and transom steps back from the paint shop, and with the hatch reassembled, next I installed the transom steps.

Transom steps in the upper right corner when goodies came back after painting

As always, I ran a tap down the 1/4″-20 holes in the transom to clear the paint residue, then coated the hole and the new stainless bolts with Tefgel. Next, I loosely installed the steps so I could tape off the surrounding paint. Then I ran a bead of Sikaflex 291 LOT on the step base and reinstalled.

Good squeeze-out all around

Three down, one to go

Et Voila!

This job really highlighted how deceptive some work can be. I had four steps to install, with a dozen or so bolts holding them in place. Sounds like a 20 minute job, right? But with the tapping, dry fit, taping, gooping, and clean up, it took a few hours. Ah well, that’s one more job done and a bunch of holes on the exterior that have been plugged.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Gantry Time

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: (previously) Hateful Portlights and Bow Hatch Out and Back from the Paint Shop

Things have been busy, so I haven’t been posting as much as I probably should. But lots of stuff has been going on behind the scenes, including some excellent progress on the hateful portlights and bow hatch.

Old portlights with lots of busted, evil screws

It wasn’t just the hundreds of stainless screws that broke off in the cast aluminum frames that were a pain, the gooey butyl they used to seal the portlights (sort of) to the hull added to the challenge. Once the screws were out and the butyl removed, I sent the whole shebang out to be blasted in preparation for paint.

Box o’ blasted portlights

The old cast aluminum cleaned up pretty good. Turns out the hardest thing to remove was that DAP-like window sealant that had hardened. The blaster called and said the aluminum was softer than the hard sealant. I thought about it for a while and remembered that some of the old sealants were oil-based…linseed or some such. So I recommended putting some vegetable oil on the stuff that just wasn’t coming off. The blaster called back two days later to report that the oil did the trick, softening up the rick-hard sealant.

V-berth portholes were galvanized steel!

I wasn’t sure what material the V-berth round portholes were made of, though it was obvious from the weight they weren’t aluminum. I also knew paint didn’t stick to them at all. Turned out they were heavily galvanized steel. We’ll find out if modern epoxy and urethane coatings work and look better than the ol’ zinc on steel.

Shiny bow hatch bits n’ pieces are ready for coating

We used the same process on all of these aluminum parts as the rest of the boat: mechanically prep the surface with blasting, then Alumaprep and Alodine, followed by Awlgrip Max Cor CF, 545, and then Awlcraft 2000.

Et voila! Shiny portholes!

Unhateful portlights!

The interior-facing parts are white, while the exterior screen flanges match the blue of the exterior accent stripe.

Scha—-weeet!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Reassembling the Bow Hatch.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Demise of the Evil Helm Windshield Frames

In March 2013, I removed the helm windshield frame so we could rebuild the cabin top. As the paint prep work was progressing, I dug into rebuilding the windshield frame to get it ready for paint. One of the biggest problems with rebuilding the frame was that the center glass frame was missing when we got the boat back in late 2007. A buddy up in the Great Lakes was parting out a smaller Roamer, and it looked like I could use his windshield frame extrusions to manufacture a center windshield frame for my boat. After fitting all of the pieces and welding the extrusions together, I started working on improving the larger frame extrusions in preparation for reassembling the main frame. During the 2013~14 winter, I disassembled the whole windshield. It turns out those things are very complex structures, with all kinds of connectors and screws holding them together. Stainless screws in aluminum in the marine environment is a recipe for trouble, and the windshield frames gave me plenty of it. But I kept at it and eventually had all of the pieces fitting pretty good and ready for reassembly.

Frame extrusions and connectors

Most of the screws came out with a bit of work, the rest had to be drilled out. The Frearson screws that hold these frames together use an undercut head. I was able to buy replacement undercut head screws that will work, though they use standard Philips drive rather than Frearson. Even after the old screws came out, though, some of the connectors were broken.

Removing broken frame connector pieces

I drilled a hole lengthwise into the aluminum connector that broke off in the extrusion. Then I twisted in a deck screw to give me something to clamp onto.

Mr. Broken Connector, meet Mr. Mallet

3 whacks and the connector came out

Scrap aluminum angle just happens to be the right size

The 6061 angle has a radiused inner corner that will have to be removed, just like they did originally. I’ll also have to bend the extrusion a bit to match the original, since the windshield frames don’t have 90 degree angles.

Mark the width

New connector, ready for final shaping, drilling, and tapping

Shopsmith bandsaw removes material from the inner corner

The new connector piece is ready to fit

Removing material to improve the fit

The center uprights were contacting the cabin top on the trailing edge, leaving the forward edge floating just a bit. Taking off a bit of material from the aft edge should improve fit.

The bottom edge of the center windshield frame upright

The pic above shows one thing I didn’t like about the original design: the bottom of the windshield frame upright extrusions were open. This leaves a very narrow line for bedding compound to seal out water. It would be best to weld plates in to provide more area, but the windshield connectors cannot be installed if there are plates in the way. I could weld in plates after the windshield is assembled, but if I ever need to disassemble it again…

It’s always something.

Final fit with new connector looks good

After getting all of the windshield extrusions and connectors ready to reassemble, I left them in a neat pile out of the way on the aft deck. My plan was to give them to the painter for refinishing, then put the whole assembly together on the boat. But before I got around to that, the boat was burglarized. In addition to cleaning out all of my tools and materials, the thieves took lots of new and also original boat parts. The OE parts that were stolen consisted of the chromed bronze stanchion parts and many of the aluminum extrusions. Consensus around the boatyard and elsewhere seems to be that after grabbing high value tools and materials, the thieves went for scrap. Recycling yards in the area were paying $2.78/lbs for bronze and 6061 aluminum was $0.78 when the theft happened.

So, just when I solved most of my evil windshield problems, thieves got around $50 in scrap and imposed on me a different resolution to the evil helm windshield problem. With the OE windshield no longer even an option, I went back to the drawing board and then on to the workshop.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The New Windshield Frames

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Rudder Alignment

With the rudders finally installed for good, next I had to align them. When we moved the boat back in 2009, the rudders weren’t aligned and it was a bear keeping the boat on course.

Rudder aiming jig

I used Harbor Freight clamps to attach some 3″x 48″ scrap 3/4″ plywood to the rudder. I’d cut the plywood using my EZ-One  Smart Table. so the cuts were perfectly straight. On the other side, I used a 48″ aluminum level.

Bosche laser measuring tool makes it a breeze

With my Bosche GLR225 up against the 3/4″ plywood on the port side, the red laser dot on the aluminum level that’s attached to the stbd rudder tells me I’m measuring the right location.

Distance between the fronts

Repeat at the back

Distance between the rears

The measurements are in meters and, because I’m measuring forward and to the rear of the actual leading and trailing edges of the rudders, the toe-in and toe-out are exaggerated. Initially, there was a toe-in condition of ~15mm. The older I get, the more I wish the U.S. had switched to the metric system way back in the 1970s. It’s sooo much easier doing the math.

So…we need some toe-out. I crawled out from under the boat, ran up the ladder, across the aft deck, down into the salon and from there into the aft stateroom, where I pulled the pin on the rudder tie rod so I could adjust it.

Adjusting the tie rod between the rudders

Then…back to the salon, up to the aft deck, down the ladder, and crawl under the boat to take another measurement.

Once more

All that work and all I got was 3mm off the leading edge???

On the trailing edge…getting closer

Once again, up the ladder and back again.

Closer still, but not quite there

And again back and forth…

Finally…

The magic numbers match

With the rudders set at zero toe, next I centered them.

Eyeballing shows they’re pretty close to center

Again, the Bosche GLR225 helps make easy work of it

The laser dot is offset on the prop hub

But the laser tells a different story farther away

At the shaft log, where the prop shaft enters the hull, the laser dot is inboard, toward the center of the shaft. This means the rudders are pointed slightly off center. If the boat was running, she’d be turning slightly to port. Calling for the missus to turn the helm to stbd, we centered the rudders in no time. And that’s a wrap for the rudders.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Demise of the Evil Helm Windshield Frames

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Props

Well, the Prussian blue finally came in. Time to lap the props to the shafts and get these babies installed.

Tools of the trade

Apply a smooth coat of Prussian blue to the taper

Latex gloves are helpful when working with Prussian blue. A little bit of that stuff goes a loooooong ways, and it can get all over everything in no time. Once there’s a thin, smooth coat across the taper, install the prop and rotate, then carefully remove the prop.

 

Wherever you see blue, there’s sub-optimal contact

This taper and prop, having just been machined, have very good contact. But a touch of valve grinding compound will make it even better.

Shaft taper lapped with valve grinding compound

There’s a limit to how much lapping you can do. Don’t want the prop bore to get too big!

After cleaning up the grinding compound on both the shaft and in the prop bore, it was time to mark the shaft.

Without the key installed, push the prop home and use a Sharpie to mark the shaft

This step tells you where the prop should seat with the key in place. Sometimes a prop can get hung up on the key before it’s fully seated on the taper.  If that happens, the nuts will feel like they’re torqued properly, but the prop might be nowhere near seated. Marking with a sharpie helps ensure the prop fully seats. The last step was to remove the prop again and installed the key, then carefully re-install the prop for the last time.

Use the big nut to seat the prop onto the taper

I ordered a 2″ socket online ($5…gotta love ebay) specifically so I could torque the nuts to the 100ft/lbs recommended by the prop shop. Once the torquing was done, I removed the big nut and installed the small nut to the same torque, followed by the big nut as the locknut.

Prop installed properly

It looks like these props were made for Chris Craft in March 1969.

With the key installed and the prop nuts torqued, the prop fully seats, covering the Sharpie mark

With the props installed, I can now get serious about installing the engines. Until now, I haven’t had a fixed point indicating where the engines need to go. With the props installed, I can set their position relative to the struts and then go move the engines so the gear output coupler mates up with the new shaft couplers I’ll install. But that’s down the road just a bit.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Recycling the Old Toe Rail Mahogany

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Hydraulic Steering II

The hydraulic steering install took more time than I anticipated for a couple of reasons. First, the thieves cleaned me out in May 2014, which was right in the middle of the hydraulic line install. I spent the better part of two months dealing with insurance companies and installing all sorts of alarms and streaming cameras on the boat. Second, the Vetus steering pump and ram I bought at the Dania Flea Market a few years ago turned out to be metric.

I know…what the heck was I thinking?!?!?

The 3/8″ stainless tubing I bought for the hydraulic lines worked out really well, as did all of the tube clamps I got from Dell City. This stuff had all been sitting in boxes in my garage, awaiting the final installation in the boat. But when it came to actually putting it in, problems popped up like lawn mushrooms in autumn.

We’ve all used 10mm wrenches on 3/8″ bolts in a pinch, right? The difference between the two isn’t much: 3/8″  = 0.375″, while 10mm = 0.394 inches. I’ve even used SAE wrenches on ancient, worn out, metric bolts, and vice versa, and the fit has been better than a proper wrench. But when it comes to hydraulic lines, ten-thousandths matter and tens of thousandths is a gap through which rivers of oil can run. So, once I got past the insurance forms and started replacing essential tools, like my Swagelok tubing bender, the next step was to figure out a way to connect the metric Vetus hardware to the tubing.

Vetus pump to 10mm copper tubing to Swagelok connector to 3/8″ stainless

The shot above is the back-side of the helm station. The Vetus pump is bolted to the aluminum plate, which is screwed to the 3/4″ plywood that’s screwed to the helm bulkhead. I first considered swapping out the metric Vetus tubing ferrules and nuts, but it turns out that they use a funky British standard thread that’s close to SAE but not interchangeable. So, I found some 10mm copper tubing on British ebay and, fortunately, Swagelok makes adapters for just about every hydraulic connection imaginable. I set up a search on ebay, and within a month the Swageloks came up at a good price.

Original helm wheel hanging on a Vetus helm pump

Eventually, I’ll re-skin the helm bulkhead with new veneer and make a mahogany cover for the pump. But that doesn’t have to happen before the boat goes in the water.

ER bulkhead with hydraulic and fuel supply and return lines fitted.

Steering and fuel lines are cut, bent, and loosely fitted

While the tank was out, I decided to install some chases to the stern

Rather than running all of the wires around the perimeter of the aft cabin, I decided to run them straight out under the tank. Chris Craft did that with the original wiring, but they just used loom clamps screwed to the framing. These boats originally came with “Ozzie and Harriet” bunks on either side, so there was tons of room under the center flooring that all vanished when I converted to a centerline fuel tanks.

I had some leftover 1-1/2″ PVC that I used to frame out Tent Model IX, so I used it for wiring chases to the transom.  The pinkish paint is actually from the same cans of Devoe 235 epoxy that I used to coat the bilge spaces after the boat was sandblasted inside and out. With the passage of time, the catalyst has changed color and tints the coating. I figure that since it’s out of sight and doesn’t affect other properties of the coating, I don’t care. It does look goofy, though.

Hydraulic lines and wire chases…CHECK!

Fwd hydraulic and fuel lines are in place, but loose so they can be rotated out of the way of the fuel tank as it goes back into place.

Original stern wiring runs through the stbd chase to the transom. The other chase is…just in case.

The 420 gallon fuel tank goes back into its cradle

“Getting Egyptian”

Those bits and pieces of 1-1/2″ PVC pipe have been invaluable when moving big, heavy stuff, like my Miller Trailblazer 280 and compressor when I reconfigured Tent Model X.

Closed up “for good” 8/11/14

Fuel lines rotated to their (eventually) final location.

I still have to fill the hydraulics and bleed the system, but first I’ve got to get the rudders reinstalled. Before I can do that, I need to get the props in. And before I can do that….the list goes on!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Another Cool Tool

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Classic Chrome Bits & Pieces

Shiny chrome is awesome.

Waaaay back in 2008, after we dissassembled the Roamer, I sent quite a few of the original bits and pieces off to be rechromed. Thinking the boat only needed “engines and a paint job,” it seemed reasonable to get the chrome done because we’d be on the water in a year or so.

Yeah…right. What the heck was I thinking???

So the chromed bits have been sitting in a box in a corner of a room in my house ever since. For a while there, during the paperwork SNAFU, I thought I might sell everything on ebay. But eventually the paperwork problem got resolved and we’ve been working on that “engines and a paint job” thing ever since. With the paint job done last year, I’ve been wanting to install some of the shiny bits–especially ones that keep water out. To do that, though, I needed the right tool to make sure that every screw hole I drill and tap is perfectly centered in hole in the chrome component.

Shiny!

Clockwise from the top, that’s one stanchion base, handrail ends and center supports, the One Mile Ray spotlight, a fabulously rare Edison built-in Toaster, the mast base, a period-correct sea horse towel holder, the helm switch plates and hourglass knobs, and the Morse control levers and covers are in the center.

Installing the flag pole base

I picked up this flag pole and base on ebay. The original  was one of the few bits that had been liberated from the boat while it was on Purgatory Row in the Southern Maryland boatyard where we found it. Before drilling the screw holes for the base, I brought the pole to the boat and fitted it to make sure it was pointed in the right direction. A degree or two off on the base can make the pole very far off.

Vix drill bits: essential tool for centering screws in countersunk holes

Drill bit in a tapered, spring-loaded sheath

The taper centers and the sheath retracts, allowing the drill to enter the work.

This works pretty good!

The tapered Vix bit perfectly centers the drill

Et voila!

I’ve got another box of classic parts to send off to the chrome shop, but there’s one item I’m a bit stumped on.

1960’s nautical themed, fully gimgalled ashtray

Yes, that wire part is sized and shaped to hold cigarettes on the outside and a cigar in the middle. Try finding THAT at your local chandlery!

Dorade-shaped top…how yachty

Chrome is a bit rough, but the ashtray itself is all there and solid, too!

The thing is, I used to smoke. But ever since I quit, I pretty much hate the smell of it (unless the cigarette is freshly lit…but don’t tell the missus). If I have this chromed and install it, it might come across as an invitation to light up…and we don’t want that. But it’s such a cool period piece. What to do, what to do…

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: BURGLERIZED!!!