1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Coats of MS1 Clear Coat on the Toe Rail

We finally got a break from the roasting hot summer in the tent, so my painter showed up with a helper and covered the boat, taped off the mahogany toe rail, and sprayed what should have been the last coats of Imron MS1 clear coat.

Sharkskin plastic and a lot of 3M 233+ tape cover the boat

The (reportedly) good thing about MS1 clearcoat is that with eight coats sprayed in two sessions, it needs no maintenance for five years even in the brutally hot sun of southern Florida. Spraying can also produce a very flat surface with terrific shine. But it takes a lot of work to get ready to spray.

Sanded with 320 grit and ready for the final top coat

Ready to start spraying

Next day…looks pretty good

As I walked around the scaffolding, I noticed a lot of junk in the MS1. At the bow, I noticed that the painter hadn’t switched the air line to the filtered supply. There’s a small filter/bulk water separator before the refrigerated air drier. But I have a Tee in the air line, with a valve that controls air to two outlets, one of which has a big Devilbiss filter/drier. The filters are expensive, so we only use that side for painting. The other outlet is used for air tools and blowing things off. But even though I positioned the supply panel with the filter up on the scaffolding, the painter didn’t switch the supply to the filtered side. I’m pretty sure the little bits of junk in the MS1 came through the air line. There are also a few spots where the paint gun dripped. And I found four pinholes (roughly 1mm diameter) that appear to go all the way to the wood.

This is frustrating. It’s expensive to pay a professional crew to come in and spray. I can’t understand how they didn’t see the pinholes when they were sanding and taping off the toe rail. Swapping the air line is something the painter has done many times since we sprayed the boat with Awlgrip. He knows what he’s supposed to do, he just got careless and forgot. And now I’ve got junk in the clearcoat. The drips could be sanded and polished, but with the pinholes scattered around the toe rail, he’ll have to sand and spray once more.

It’s always something.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Back to the V-berth Cabinetry

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Swim Platform

When we first got the boat back in 2007, the swim platform looked pretty ragged. It hadn’t been refinished in years and was loaded down with junk. Tossing out the junk, we found moss growing on the teak. I unbolted it from the boat, and the platform has been sitting out in front of my garage ever since, awaiting an opportunity to be disassembled, cleaned, sanded, refinished, and reassembled. All that has to be done before the boat can splash, since the mounting bolts go through the hull below the waterline. During the fall of 2013, I finally got around to disassembling the platform and cleaning the teak, then I moved the wooden bits inside a storage room in my house so it could completely dry out over the winter. In April I sanded it and ordered some 3/4″ teak bungs to replace ones that had fallen out or were sanded too thin. Then the boat got burglarized, and my sanders and West System resin and 207 special clear hardener, which I’d taken back to the boat to do some interior work, were stolen. I finally got around to replacing the stolen tools and epoxy, and last weekend I laid a bunch of West System on the platform. I think it turned out pretty good, especially when I remember what it looked like originally.

How it all started…

It’s been a while since I saw that pic. Every time I see it now, I wonder what the hell I was thinking!

Ahhh, the moss….

But then, fast forward five long years and the moss finally started coming off.

After sitting outside for another five years…not so different

All the bits and pieces came off rather easily

In the picture above, though, check out the nasty broken bits on the end of the teak strips.

Aluminum wood screws!

What were they thinking??? I mean, aluminum is great stuff, but used as screws to hold hardware onto a swim platform???

Some pieces came off in…pieces

Those white pins sticking out of the trailing edge of the platform in the above pic are aluminum screws with the heads snapped off. I’m not sure what broke the rub rail, but it’s a ragged break. There’s no evidence of crash damage though… Ah well, these things can be welded back together.

No sealant = badly corroded aluminum

Any water that wicked between the rub rail and the teak just sat there eating the aluminum and feeding the moss and mold. We’ll do it differently when it all goes back together.

Fasteners & Hardware

This pic makes a strong case for never, ever using aluminum wood screws on a swim platform. The stainless nuts and washers, by comparison, are only stained a bit.

Hardware’s gone. Time to start scrubbing.

Gak…what a mess

I could have sworn I took pix along the way as I washed off the teak then hit it with 2-part teak cleaner, but I can’t find them anywhere. After letting the platform sit clean but unsanded in a storage room in my house over the winter, I brought it out and sanded it from 120 grit through 320, then I coated the entire underside with West System epoxy resin and 207 Special Clear hardener. It was amazing how much epoxy the teak soaked up. After coating the bottom of the platform, I installed the mounting bracket fasteners and bungs.

New 3/4″ bungs & drips of West System epoxy from when I coated the bottom side

I don’t know what the black glue was they used to assemble the platform, but the glue line had failed in many places. Hopefully, the West System that flowed through the joints will have soaked into the wood. Either way, a monolithic coating of epoxy should help hold it together for a few more decades.

Bungs trimmed and the entire top surface sanded and ready for epoxy coating

Couple of repairs in the corners

For small repairs and to seal up the ends of the teak, I first saturated the area with West, then I applied a mixture of epoxy and wood flour. The wood flour doesn’t look anything at all like teak, but the alternative is to spend days fashioning teak chips to fit each broken end.  I’m not going to be that picky with this old platform.

In addition to positively closing the pores in the end of each teak strip, the thickened epoxy acts like a dam to hold the epoxy clear coat in the joints. I used the same approach on all of the open sections of the platform, first saturating with clear epoxy then coating the ends of each strip of teak with wood flour-thickened West.

Another repair, this time with real teak

It ain’t perfect, but all things considered it will be much better than before.

More repairs on the underside of the platform where there used to be nasty missing bits

I’ll trim these blocks down when I sand the bottom and give it the final epoxy coating. For now, I’m just trying to get a good base coat on all sides.

All rub rail screw holes are filled with dowels

I wetted out the holes and the dowels with West, then coated the dowels with epoxy thickened with wood flour before driving them home with a mallet.

Et voila! Base-coated with epoxy

Pretty good looking old teak

The repair area on top…not perfect, but not bad, either

My nemesis: bubbles

I realized too late that I didn’t intend to reuse the ladder that was attached at the screw holes in the picture above. My only course of action was to fill the holes with resin. Every time I thought I had it filled up, a bubble would rise from the depths. It took about two hours of tipping with a brush and dripping resin to finally burp the last of the air out.

Finally, done and ready for sanding

I’ll let the epoxy cure for a week, then sand the top and bottom flat. I still have to recoat the bottom and edge seal the whole shebang. Then, depending on how it looks, I may give the top-side one more epoxy coating. But if there’s plenty of epoxy remaining after it’s sanded smooth, I’ll turn it over to the Boatamalan at that point for coating with DuPont MS1, the same super coating we used on the toe rail.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Hydraulic Steering

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Off Comes the Plastic (AKA the Paint Job is Done)!

I recently made some changes to the navigation on this site to make it easier to find articles. The new article index has every one listed in chronological order. When I look at the titles of the articles I’ve written recently, with so many of them focused on windows, portholes and glass instead of epoxy, fairing or sanding, it’s pretty clear the body and paint work part of the refit is coming to a close. The cabin top, hull and decks were sprayed over the summer of 2013, as was the mahogany toe rail (the first time around). The blue accent stripes have been painted for weeks. The only thing left to bring closure to the exterior paint job is to spray the final coats of Imron MS1 on the toe rail and take off all of the tape and masking film, which is precisely what we did last weekend, in mid-November 2013.

New mahogany toe rail sanded and ready for the final coats of Imron MS1

We went through a total of three cases of 2″ 3M 233+ tape on this paint job. If I never see another roll, it will be too soon!

Sanded, taped, wiped, tacked off and ready to spray

The Boatamalan painter sprayed on Saturday, then we all went home. I returned the following morning to pull all of the tape and hand masking film. Some of it had been on the boat for almost a month, since we painted the hull in Awlcraft 2000 Matterhorn White.

Et voila!

Without further ado…off came the plastic!

The helm station view hasn’t changed much since we painted the dashboard and cabin top

The side deck view looks pretty much the same as when we did the nonskid

Even the bow hasn’t changed all that much

But it sure is nice to see all of the bits uncovered at the same time.

Tinted bow seat windows look pretty good

I’m still working with the manufacturer on some issues with these windows, so they’re just dry fit here. Still, I like the way they turned out and the effect the tinted windows have against the white cabin top.

Need to install the bow seat hatches…soon

Dropping down off the bow, we can finally see the whole paint job…sorta. The tent limits how much you can see at any one time.

Nice stripe!

Wild shot looking up from ground level

The mirror-like reflection of the tent frames and walls in the new Awlgrip 2000, coupled with the upper accent stripe and boot stripe plus the chine as it goes forward to the stem yielded a mind-bending result through the camera lens when I put it on forced flash.

Red, white & blue seems appropriate for an American classic

Yes, that reflected paint can does say Awlgrip!

Again, props to the Boatamalan for flowing out the paint so well.

Shiny!

Somebody opened the door of the tent while I was pulling all of the plastic. He commented that it didn’t look like any metal boat he’d ever seen.

I agree. 🙂

Dang wire from the tent got in the way of this otherwise excellent shot!

Stbd side looks good, too

Tinted windows really finish the look

Yeah, baby 🙂

That’s a mound of masking tape and film

It took the better part of six hours to pull it all, and at the end of the day the pile was high. I’ll be getting my money’s worth in dry slip fees this month just in garbage disposal alone! lol

That’s basically a wrap for the paint work. Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Polishing the Stainless Rub Rails.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Painting the Stripes

With winter rapidly approaching, we’re in a race with Mother Nature to get the paint work done. We painted Awlcraft 2000 on the cabin top, decks, and aft enclosure during the summer, and the hull got “the shiny” as autumn 2013 settled into the area.  The only exterior paint work left to do are the accent stripes on the hull and the final coats of Imron MS1 High Gloss Clear on the mahogany toe rail. Last weekend, we got the blue stripes done.

The pictures we took when we first got the Roamer back in late 2007 were not especially helpful as a guide to what the stripes should look like now because the boat had been completely repainted some time in the early 1980s. The lines on the upper stripe, in particular, went up and down over the length of the boat and didn’t widen at the bow the way they should. We also looked at other Roamer 46 pictures, but it’s difficult to know where the proper lines should be since all of the boats seem to be slightly different.

I asked the stripe guru from Weaver Boatworks to come over, but the perfectly straight lines they use at Weaver didn’t work. The Weaver boats have no portholes in the hulls that they have to follow, so they can make their lines perfectly straight along any orientation the owners want. We have to make our stripe wide enough to cover all  of the portholes along the hull sides and the engine vents, too. But none of the rectangular porthole openings are perfectly aligned, and the ER vents and the forward round portholes are a different height than the rectangular ones. When the striping guru made perfectly straight lines that just covered the aft stateroom windows and ER vents, which is what all of the pictures of Roamer 46s look like, the lower lines went through the middle of the round port holes at the front of the boat. And when he made them wide enough to cover the round ports forward and rectangular ones all along the hull sides, the stripes were ridiculously wide aft!

So much for using perfectly straight lines on an old aluminum Chris Craft production boat…

After ripping down the fine-line tape twice(!), the stripe guru focused on the boot stripe while I eyeballed the upper stripe and just got ‘er done.

Taping off the stripes

Once the stripes were taped off, we machine sanded the large areas using Mirka Abranet 320, taking care to avoid corners and the fine line tape. Then we went back and hand sanded all of the shiny spots right up to the tape line.

Taping the ER vents from the inside

Hand masking film goes on next to protect the new Alwcraft 2000 Matterhorn White

These boats originally had a “shadow box” paint layout for the stern, with the inset part of the transom and portholes the same color as the accent and boot stripe. Because this is an aluminum boat and there is no lazarette separating the transom from the aft stateroom, I felt a large area of dark painted exterior would add too much unwanted heat to the interior of the boat. So we’re only putting color on the transom at the boot stripe.

With the Matterhorn White protected, next we turned Tent Model IX (the best tent ever!) into a spray booth again.

Taped off, wiped down, tacked off, and ready to spray

This boat originally had dark green stripes, but we prefer blue. So we mixed up some Awlcraft 2000 Navy Blue, fired up the compressor and refrigerated air drier and suited up. The results were freakin’ outstanding, if I do say so myself.

Props to the Boatamalan* painter!

*Boatamalan: portmanteau indicating highly skilled boat workers of Central American origin. They’re actually from Honduras, but boat + [Guat]amalan has a nicer ring to it.

Talk about nice flow!

The fuzzy, spotty reflection is actually a mirror-like reflection of the translucent hand masking film covering the tent frames and very dirty exterior tent material.

No runs, even at the ER vent gills.

The blue line widens at the bow and covers both porthole openings

Pix don’t capture the shiny as well as the eye can, but this stuff is like a mirror!

Man, am I glad the exterior tent isn’t see-through. When I was walking around taking the pix, I was doin’ a happy dance all around the scaffolding! 🙂

Shiny!

I stopped dead with the happy dance though, when I turned toward the bow and saw the reflection in the pic below.

You can read the small print on the Sharkskin label in the reflection!

The picture doesn’t capture it entirely, but I hope you get the idea…seriously, the chief Boatamalan has absolutely mad skills when it comes to flowing out Awlgrip paint. And once again, he said the job is much cleaner than what they normally get on paint jobs at Weaver Boatworks, where the whole shop is full of flying dust and they can’t stop working for a day so the floating particles can settle out before spraying.

We’ll leave the plastic up for a week so we don’t have to re-tape when we spray the final coats of MS1 on the toe rail. Then that’s a wrap for the big paint work.

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Re-bunging the Mahogany Toe Rail

I think the name of this boat should be “Three steps forward, one step back.”

Over the summer of 2013, we sprayed “the shiny” on the hardtop, the cabin top, the helm dashboard, and the aft enclosure; the non-skid was done, too. Before painting the shiny Matterhorn White Awlcraft 2000, the Boatamalan painter had already sprayed the mahogany toe rail with eight coats of Imron MS1 High Gloss Clear. The last step to finish the shiny paintwork from the rub rail up was to sand the mahogany toe rail perfectly flat with 320 grit Mirka Abranet and spray the final 2~3 coats of MS1. But when I pulled the protective plastic from the toe rail after the Awlgrip spraying was done, it became apparent there was a problem: The bungs that cover the 1/4-20 machine screws that mechanically fasten the mahogany to the deck needed to be replaced.

My instructions to the woodworker who put the bungs in were explicit: make sure the glue line is solid. If there’s any gap in the glue line, water will eventually wick in and cause trouble in the mahogany and maybe even the aluminum below.

But when the woodworker was done, epoxy didn’t fill the joint all the way to the top. With regular varnish, you can keep pushing it into the bungs until they finally fill up. But no matter how much the painter flowed out the MS1 while spraying the initial coats, it simply wouldn’t fill the space between the bungs and the holes into which they were driven. I recently figured out the reason why: the woodworker had only fully wetted 5 bungs with epoxy out of the 198 bungs in the rail. The rest were mostly held in place by friction. All of the those had to be replaced or the MS1 would fail in no time.

It looked pretty good from the top.

But when you looked closer, the circles around the bungs became more apparent.

White circles around each bung are from dust catching in deep crevices

We saw the rings around the bungs when the MS1 cured on the rail but thought that we could simply fill the void by applying MS1 to the gaps with a syringe. Then we’d sand it flat and spray the last coats of MS1.  But the more I thought about it, the more concerned I became that maybe the woodworker hadn’t used enough epoxy to wet out the bungs and the holes they were going into before driving the bungs home. I confirmed this concern when I pushed on a bung and it slid down into the hole! Upon removal, we found zero evidence of any glue at all! Temperature changes would have popped the bungs over time, and water would have found its way into the toe rail mahogany to cause rot and the aluminum below it, creating aluminum oxide that would push the paint off.

Out came the bungs!

This stuff is disheartening. The woodworker who did this joins the list of highly paid clowns (with great references!) whose work has to be redone.

All of the holes must be precisely drilled.

It is much more difficult to remove bungs and replace them and have it look right than it is to simply do it right the first time.

Two good bungs! Yea!!

Removing and replacing the bungs took three days, but because I can only work on weekends that translates to two weeks. 😦

Resprayed with MS1

The joy of seeing the shiny mahogany toe rail is lost a bit by the fact that it had to be done twice. All you can do is sigh and move on.

Absolutely, perfectly mirror smooth

Done

With all surfaces above the rub rail now painted and done, the only thing left paint-wise is to do the final longboarding on the hull, prime with Awlgrip 545, final sand and shoot.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Exhaust

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: “The Shiny” Out to the Rub Rail

With the exterior from the decks up painted with “the shiny” the next steps involves painting the fillet outboard of the mahogany toe rail to the upper rub rail. The hull at the bow is about eight feet tall, so without mid-height scaffolding it’s impossible to see over the upper rub rail to paint. But mid-height scaffolding  would get in the way of painting the lower portions of the hull, so we have to break this up into two parts…it’s always something.

Anyway, we sanded the Alwgrip 545 primer on the fillet and rub rail with 320 grit Mirka Abranet, then wiped everything down and taped it off for “the shiny,” which is what my Boatamalan painter calls shiny top coat paint.

The mahogany toe rail was still taped off from the earlier paint work.

The shiny, the non-skid and the bright toe rail really look good!

Nice knot.

We taped off the toe rail using 3M 233+ tape and Sharkskin 20-foot wide masking film.

Almost ready for paint.

It’s important to keep the plastic tensioned so it doesn’t flop around and stir up dust when the painter comes by shooting the top coat. But, you have to be careful not to put too much tension on it…the Sharkskin tears easily.

Done!

We used 3M foam tape for the blend area at the scupper, then wetted down the scaffolding and got to painting. Once again, Tent Model IX provided a nice, nearly dust-free environment. That’s a wrap for the upper paint work. All that remains is to longboard the hull once more, apply a bit of primer to some low spots, then we’ll put shiny on the hull!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Re-bunging the Mahogany Toe Rail

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Non-skid!

Got a call Wednesday AM from my Boatamalan painter. We chatted for a few minutes about this and that, and then he says “I’m at the boat now. I just finished spraying the non-skid.”

It’s so nice when contract workers do a job ahead of schedule and for the agreed price.

“But,” he says, “you gotta pull the tape ASAP.”

It turns out that non-skid transforms tape into a concrete-like substance that gets harder and harder to remove the longer you wait past 12 hours. So, I got up at oh-dark-thirty the following morning and went out to the tent to remove tape and plastic. I kid you not–the Boatamalan was right. Most of the tape came off easily, but in spots the non-skid just did not want to let go. With a bit of gentle persuasion I finally got all of the tape and plastic film off before heading to my day job.

I haven’t had all the plastic off the boat since we put the shiny on the hard top back in May 2013. I’ll let the pix tell the rest of the story.

Even in the mostly-white tent, the reflection in “the shiny” is brilliant.

Props to the Boatamalans for some damn fine paint work. The lack of contrast makes it tough to see in pix, but you can just make out the band of shiny around the non-skid on the mini deck over the transom.

Long view down the starboard side

She’s really coming together nicely.

The new helm door opening and side deck fillets look like they belong on the boat.

The shiny extends one inch past the fillets on the side decks. I’m really glad the Boatamalan suggested that approach.

Shiny dashboard….needs a windshield.

Just enough non-skid for safety

Shiny stripe down the center

Brilliant non-skid detail around the bow hatch opening

Again…props to the Boatamalans.

All of that sanding with the six-foot longboards paid off.

We’re taking this weekend off to recharge a bit…go anchor out at Three Sisters on the Potomac in our 42′ Chris Craft Commander. I might pop in to the Roamer on Sunday to work on the toe rail, but that’s it.

Now that the paint work is done from the decks up, we’ll sand the MS1 High Gloss Clear on the toe rail one last time, then apply two more coats (for a total of ten). After that, we’ve got to finish longboarding the starboard hull, then hit it with Awlquik in spots, longboard again, then apply Awlgrip 545 final primer. Then, we’ll final sand the hull with Mirka Abranet 320 grit, and in about three hours on a Sunday morning apply the last of the Awlcraft 2000 Matterhorn White.

This paint job should be done by the end of September.

Yippee! 🙂

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: “The Shiny” Out to the Rub Rail

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Shiny Mahogany Moldings on the Aft Enclosure

When the lead Boatamalan* talks about painting Awl Grip top coats, he refers to it as “the shiny.” He’s also quick to point out that painting a boat is a complicated thing. It’s not like a car or house where you tape off the bits you don’t want coated and do the whole thing in one go.

Boatamalan: portmanteau indicating highly skilled boat workers of Central American origin. 😉

We started out by painting the shiny and non-skid on the hardtop back in early May 2013. After a scorching mid-summer hiatus, we put Imron MS1 High Gloss Clear on the mahogany toe rail, then taped it off and put  shiny on the cabin top and side decks in early August. Then we taped off all of the painted areas again and covered them with 20′ wide Sharkskin plastic film before priming the aft enclosure; we’d already primed the helm dashboard back in May. This leaves only three areas that still need the shiny: the hull, which we’ll do last, the dashboard and the aft enclosure.

Last weekend, we knocked out two of the three. 😉

But before we could paint “the shiny,” I had to install a couple of mahogany moldings.

In preparation for painting on Saturday and Sunday, on Friday afternoon I went to the boat to install some mahogany trim pieces that cover the seam between the exterior panels of the aft enclosure and the 1″ square tube 6061 aluminum framing. The panels were stitch welded to the framing, which leaves the seam exposed to the weather. I’d already filled the seams with epoxy and faired them flat, but I wanted to cover the seams entirely to ensure water could never find its way into the seam. I also wanted to round off the corners to protect the canvas that will eventually enclose the aft deck.

So I made up some molding pieces out of African mahogany and had the Boatamalans seal them on all sides with West System epoxy resin and 207 Special Clear Hardener. With the end grain and all faces sealed in epoxy, the Boatamalans then sanded the moldings and sprayed them with eight coats of Imron MS1 High Gloss Clear.

Epoxy bonding mahogany trim to the aft enclosure

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

I’m using the same fastener-less approach to bond these mahogany pieces to the enclosure panels as Weaver Boatworks uses to bond the teak toe rails to their multi-million dollar sportfish boats: thickened epoxy and lots of clamps. As the epoxy squeezes out of the joint, I removed it with a plastic scraper. Then, just before the epoxy kicks off, I went over the joint with lacquer thinner on a soft rag to remove any remaining epoxy residue. This last step is absolutely critical, because Awl Grip 545 primer is much softer than the epoxy. There’s no way to sand excess epoxy off without going through the surrounding primer first.

Need more clamps!

With the epoxy kicked off on the port side, I repeated the process on the starboard. Definitely need more clamps for this kind of work.

Good looking mahogany!

I finished the day at 9pm then came back at 6AM the following day to remove the clamps and tape in preparation for the next step.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Painting the Shiny on the Helm Dashboard.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Refinishing the Mahogany Safety Rail

Back when we started this refit in late 2007, one of the things that got me hooked on this Roamer was the fact that most all the original bits and pieces were there. The boat had been on the hard since the mid-1980s, which meant it only had about 15 years or less of actual use. Unlike many Chris Crafts, which came with vinyl-coated stainless safety lines on the side decks, this one came with mahogany hand rails all the way forward. Of course, the mahogany wasn’t cared for the entire time it was in the boatyard, and the varnish had long-since gone away. But the rails themselves were in very good condition. The grain had opened up a bit and the surface had oxidized to grey, but otherwise they were in good shape. Fast forward to August 2013, and we finally made them pretty again.

40 year-old Chris Craft mahogany

The mahogany mast and safety rails got a good sanding before we ran them over to a nearby shop. The mahogany is rock hard, old stock. It took quite a bit of sanding but eventually cleaned up well.

After sanding, we generously applied West System epoxy.

The grain had opened up a lot, and some of the cracks were pretty deep. To bind it all together again and give a smooth surface for the final top coat — Imron MS1 high gloss clear — we mixed up some West System 105 epoxy and 207 Special Clear Hardener. The natural color of the wood is very nice, so we didn’t use any stains.

Brush-applied West System is very shiny.

Filling all of the cracks took three heavy coats of West. We’ll sand it flat later and spray two coats of the high gloss clear. Even with just West System on it, the wood is beautiful. It cleaned up really well.

12:1 scarf joints and very deep cracks in the grain.

Some folks might prefer brand new wood everywhere, since that’s what we did for the mahogany toe rail, but I like the character of this old wood. Compared to what we started with, they’ve come back quite nicely, I think.

Circa December 2007

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit:  Final Awl Grip 545 Primer on the Aft Enclosure

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: “Shiny” on the Toe Rail

Brutal summer has arrived in 2013, and the paint work on the Roamer has been relentlessly delayed by mechanics and woodworkers who either don’t show up at all or who finish jobs months behind schedule — which throws off the schedule or necessitates a major reshuffle of everything teed up behind what they need to do. They seem to have a hard time understanding the order of operations on a project like this. The mechanic recently argued that it doesn’t matter that he’s nine months behind schedule on the engine install. “Just finish the paint job and I’ll cut the holes for the exhaust after.”

Yeah…like I want anybody cutting into an otherwise perfect paint job just because he couldn’t get his work done as planned and promised. It’s been frustrating.

The Boatamalans, by comparison, are wailing along where they can.

The last article documented installing the new African Mahogany toe rail. This time around, we’ll be looking at the Imron MS1 finish the guys put on the rail.

Last week, the toe rail was sanded and ready to be finished.

Eight coats of Imron MS1 later…

Dare I say SA—-WEEET!

MS1 polyurethane down to the fillet…and a bit over.

When we prime and paint, we’ll tape off just above the end of the fillet. This will leave a solid polyurethane coating over the entire area, leaving no traditional seams into which water can seep.

We have to spot fill some of the bungs.

The bung seams drank up a lot of MS1, so we’ll use a syringe later to fill them before sanding the whole thing flat and applying the last two coats.

MS1 down to the fillets on the inside edge, too.

Next step: cover up the pretty stuff like a Muslim girl going to market.

That blue diamond tread plastic is outstanding for covering up and protecting finished work.

Ready for fine-line tape and primer

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Tent Collapse!