1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Engine Room Steps

I’m not sure what the original steps down into the engine room were made of, but when I found this Roamer 46 they were made of two greasy 2x4s screwed to  a couple of mahogany sticks. I have a hard time believing Chris Craft did that, but who knows? I found some leftover aluminum tubing and sheet while cleaning up during the conversion of Tent Model X to Model XXX, and l figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone–make a better set of steps and get some aluminum welding practice. It’s a lot different than welding steel, and I’m a rank amateur at that.

Steps I removed from the boat…can’t possibly be OEM

20′ stick of 1″ x 1/8″ wall 6061 aluminum tubing

Miller 280NT Trailblazer engine-driven welder

I’ve been really impressed with this Trailblazer. With my Spoolmatic 30a MIG gun, it worked great welding the new propeller shaft strut barrels in and on other projects. Then it sat unused for a year while I focused on other things, including dealing with the aftermath of the bastard thieves who stole all of the parts, materials, and tools on the boat back in 2014. A little solar charger keeps the battery topped up, but I expected it might have trouble starting. But–good news! I hit the starter for 10 seconds and she ran great!

Not quite dialed in, but not bad for the first zzZAP.

For short welds like this it would be nice to have a TIG machine, but I don’t do enough welding to justify buying one and spending the time learning how to use it. So I’ll just get ‘er done with my spoolgun.

I hit the joint with a flap disk to clean off the mill scale and surface corrosion, then wire brushed the area with my “aluminum only” stainless brush before starting the weld. It would have been better to hit the whole area with the flap disk. I’ve learned that aluminum is very sensitive to contamination in the weld area–way more than steel.

Not great, but better than a couple of greasy 2x4s

I’ll tie in a second set of side rails and rungs, then add 3/16″ plate for the steps.

Weld overkill or practical practice welds?

A couple of tack welds would have sufficed for the  step plate-to-rung weld, but I ran continuous beads to practice my technique. I don’t have the smooth hand that good welder pros do, but this is a non-critical application and the continuous bead should make up for shortcomings in my technique.

Welding the top-side of the rung

Got a bit of undercut on the right side of the weld in the pic above, but it’ll be fine for a set of ER steps.

Ready to test fit

Way better than greasy 2x4s

The piece of wood on the left of the above picture was one of the mahogany stick uprights for the previous steps.

Good fit

Unfortunately, I ran out of Devoe 235 epoxy primer, which is what I’ve used as a surface coating in the engine room. Worse, the local distributor stopped carrying Devoe, so now I’m trying to find another local source. The cost of shipping from the regional supplier is more than than the gallon kit itself, because it has a government-mandated “HAZARD” sticker on the can. That, and a few other things, got me wondering how many boat refits stall because of the cost added by government regulation? That said, I’m not going to let a gallon kit of epoxy kill this project. I’ll just paint the steps later. For now, they’re a great improvement over what was there before.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Porthole Screens

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Propeller Shafts (part 1)

With the exterior paint work done, I have to get the propeller shafts installed before retiring Tent Model IX. The tent goes all the way to the ground, which keeps out any breeze that might blow away the argon shielding gas from weld areas…and the prop shaft cutlass bearing housings have some very critical welded joints.

Our Roamer originally came with 1.5″ Aquamet 17 shafts that worked fine for the 400hp twin turbo and intercooled Super Seamaster engines that were in the boat when we first got it. But when we decided to upgrade to Cummins 430hp Diamonds, with all of that power coming online at 2600rpm (vs 3200rpm for the Seamasters), the result was a safety factor of three. Since the recommended safety factor is at least five, that meant we had to replace the shafts with 1-3/4″ ones. While the original shaft log would accommodate the larger diameter, I had to cut off the cutlass bearing housings (with brand new, practically unused cutlass bearings installed back in 2009!) and have new ones made up and welded in place.

Struts await new cutlass bearing housings

The good thing about aluminum is that woodworking tools can be used to cut and shape it. A sawsall and circular saw with carbide blades got the old cutlass bearing housings off the boat fairly quickly.

New 1-3/4″ cutlass bearing, with matching housing and collets

Before we could weld the new cutlass bearing housings onto the original 3/4″ 6061 plates that make up the V struts, we had to ensure that the the struts were cut to the proper angle. The collets in the picture above are sized to fit around the new shafts, then slide inside the new housings.

Two-piece aluminum collets can take the heat of welding without catching fire

The cutlass bearings are made of rubber and phenolic, neither one of which responds well to the kind of heat we’ll generate when the housings get welded in. The two-piece collets are a tight fit to the shafts and a snug fit inside the housings, but not too tight…we need to be able to remove them after the welding is done and everything has cooled down.

Pretty slick fit…ready to install

Nice fit to the OE struts

When we raised the shaft/collet/housing assemblies into place, we found the V-strut cuts were pretty much where they needed to be. In the engine room, I verified that the shafts were dead center in the shaft log. I used a jack to raise the housings as high as the V-strut plate cuts allow before blocking them up.

The intermediate strut fit was good

Welding this intermediate strut assembly will prove to be a challenge, since my Miller Spoolmatic 30a has a straight nozzle. With only six inches between the hull and the bearing housing, it doesn’t have much room to allow us to weld inside the V.

Ten passes later, the housings were welded in.

My Miller Trailblazer 280NT and the spool gun performed flawlessly while the fabricator made multiple passes to fill in the “vee’d out” welded joint. On the rear strut, he was able to weld inside the vee as well as outside. For the intermediate strut though, the straight nozzle on my spoolgun just won’t work. We’ll have to take another crack at it with a flexible nozzle the fabricator will bring from his shop. Since we had both housings welded in (as far as we could with my equipment) on the starboard side, we prepared to swap the collets out so we could rig up the housings and shafts on the port side.

Bad news…stuck collet

The two collets on the intermediate housing came right out, but on the rear strut the rear collet took a bit of nudging with a hammer and chisel. Unfortunately, the forward collets just wouldn’t budge…at all…not even with a 10# mallet. So, we have to wait until next weekend to attack again. We’ll use a bit of heat and maybe a hydraulic cutlass bearing press to remove the collets and set them up on the other side. We’ll also have the fabricator’s welding gear that can weld in the tight space of the intermediate struts.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Windshield Frames (part I)

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: De-SMIB-ifying the Helm Door Opening

Per the Urban Dictionary, SMIB: n. Acronym for “Southern Maryland InBred”. Refers primarily to the residents of St. Mary’s County, Maryland, who are obsessed with lite beer, pro wrestling, and NASCAR. It also refers to SMIBs’ alleged predilection for inbreeding and its unfortunate genetic consequences, including limited mental capacity.

That limited mental capacity part appears to have been at work when the SMIB welder put in this helm door opening. While working around the aluminum aft enclosure recently, I noticed that the starboard sliding door could not possibly work. Like one of those M.C. Escher lithographs of physically impossible structures, e.g. a waterfall that drops into the pool that feeds the waterfall or an endless square staircase in which the bottom tread becomes the top one, the St. Mary’s County fabricator who built the aft enclosure had assembled the pieces in a way that made it impossible for the slider door to slide. He SMIB-ified my Roamer!

I first noticed a related problem back in 2008 when I came to the boatyard the weekend after he had welded the panels in place.  I was surprised to find that the forward-most panels had twist in the top half, which made it impossible to install windows in the resulting openings. The starboard side had about one inch of twist, while the port side was only 1/4″ out. It looked like maybe he’d tacked the bottoms in place, then pushed the top halves around until they matched the lines on the hardtop. Since it was the weekend and the welder wasn’t around, I wrote “How can flat windows fit in a twisted window opening?” on the panels with a Sharpie.

Apparently, he got the point because when I returned the next weekend, I found he’d made some cuts and fastened the panels in place. It wasn’t an elegant solution, but a straight edge revealed that he had, in fact, resolved the twist problems. I was so focused on the twist being resolved (and distracted by the paperwork SNAFU that was unfolding) that I didn’t see the new problems the SMIB welder had created with his “solution.”

Fortunately, though, the Roamer is an aluminum boat and I have a good sawzall, a Miller 280NT Trailblazer welder, and a Miller Spoolmatic 30A spool gun. De-SMIB-ifying the helm door opening only took part of a day.

Port helm door opening

The forward panel of the aft enclosure on the port side is positioned such that no significant modification is required to the original Chris Craft hardtop to install a sliding door. We removed the gelcoat outboard of the panel so we can apply a heavy layer of fiberglass to bond the aluminum to the hardtop. The place where the gelcoat is removed is where the upper slider track will be mounted. This is pretty much exactly what I described to the SMIB back in 2008.

The port side lines up with the hardtop support at the leading edge of the door opening.

SMIBified starboard door opening.

The SMIBified panel occupies the space where the slider door would slide into. The leading edge of the panel is actually outboard of where the slider assembly would normally mount.

The SMIB fabricator actually cut two out of three aluminum panels on the starboard side almost perfectly, and his welds were outstanding. His fundamental problem seems to have been that he forgot boats are never symmetrical–he appears to have made the starboard panels identical to the port ones. It started to look like the center panel was the source of the problem that manifested itself at the door opening.

Note the gap between the aluminum panel and the fiberglass hardtop.

The left panel ends at the welded joint. It should have continued to the right another 1-1/2 inches or so.

Good looking welds, though, eh?

First, remove the offending panel.

I always expect the worst from Harbor Freight tools, but their sawsall just keeps on going. It’s noisy, but with a Freud carbide cutting blade it goes through 1/4″ 5052 aluminum plate like butter.

Next, sight down the panel and mark the proper line.

The line all the way to the right on the hardtop is the proper one. The gelcoat that remains indicates where the SMIB welded the panel in. On the center panel that’s still in place, you can see that everything would have been fine if he had moved it to the right so the curve fit the radius in the hardtop…but then that means that he actually messed up when he positioned the aft panel on this side, too. The top edge must be too far outboard.

The top of the starboard aft panel is inset from the hardtop slightly less than one inch.

The port side is inset 1-3/4 inches.

So, the problem with the helm door opening not lining up actually started at the aft-most panel, which, incidentally, also had a bit of twist welded into it. That problem was compounded by the center panel not being cut to fit. But with the forward panel cut out, the path forward to fix the problem was clear.

The next step was to fire up the Miller Trailblazer 280NT and burn on the top plate.

This top plate will allow me to securely fasten the hardtop to this panel.

“Insert part A into slot B”

I’ll butt joint the panel to the deck rather than overlapping.

The SMIB overlapped the panel, but that approach takes up valuable space where the door is supposed to go. On the left side of the pic above, you can see the gap at the bottom between the two panels. I’ll cut a long, skinny wedge out of plate and weld it in to fill the gap.

Nice fit there and the panel is no longer part of an Escher sculpture.

Et voila! De-SMIB-ified door opening.

Gotta love metal boats!

While I had the welder running, I also installed tabs to each of the panels to provide a place for #14 screws to mechanically fasten the hardtop to the enclosure.

The tabs each line up with at least one of the heavy mahogany frames in the hardtop.

On the port side, I just used straight plate.

With that done, I shut down the welder and helped the Boatamalans continue sanding the Awl Quik we applied two weekends before.

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Tools of the Trade

If there’s one thing missing from most DIY boatyards, it’s adequate electrical power for a job the size of this refit. No matter what anybody says about how great their 120VAC compressors and welders are, when you’re talking about welding 1/4″ aluminum plate and fairing and painting a 46′ motor yacht, you’ve simply got to have 240VAC equipment. I checked into a lot of equipment options while the refit project was stalled because of the paperwork SNAFU. Once the SNAFU was resolved in 2012, I made the investment in equipment that would get the job done.

The heart of the system is this Miller Trailblazer 280NT welder.

Not only can this bad boy put out more than enough power to weld 1/4″ aluminum plate with constant voltage, constant current, MIG, TIG or stick processes, it’ll simultaneously provide 8,000 honest watts of AC electricity at 120 and/or 240VAC…and it can do it all day long. The downside is that the Onan V-twin engine in this thing is dang noisy. It’s also a thirsty beast, which makes the electricity it generates about 30x more expensive than line power. But when adequate line power doesn’t extend out into the yard, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Campbell Hausfeld 2-stage air compressor

When the painter calls for more compressed air than my little Craftsman 120v oil-free unit can provide, which is most of the time, Step One is to fire up the Trailblazer. Then I hit the switch on the Campbell Hausfeld compressor. The compressor works well enough, but a key take-home lesson on compressors is that whatever you think will be big enough won’t, in fact, be enough when the project is in full swing.

Air-powered equipment really varies in how much air they need, and this compressor, which is rated at 12.9CFM @175psi, can barely keep up with even one DA sander of the type the fairing crew prefers to use. With other, more frugal air equipment, the compressor keeps up fine with one or even two users. But when the whole crew is onsite, they need five of those air-hungry sanders going all day long!

There are all kinds of compressors that can crank out 34 to 50CFM, but at that point you’re talking 10 to 20hp motor requirements to drive the things, and that means 3 phase power. The Trailblazer makes plenty of juice, but I’d have to buy or build a phase converter to operate 3-phase equipment. It’s always something…

There’s also the practical usefulness of the equipment once the project is done. I may or may not keep the Trailblazer and the spoolgun and weld controller that go with it once we splash the boat, but the Campbell Hausfeld compressor is perfect for a well-equipped home shop. A bigger unit that can keep up with five hard working Boatamalans is just too much once the project’s done–I’d end up selling it, potentially at a loss. So, we get along with the Campbell Hausfeld even though the guys (who are spoiled by the unlimited air supply at their Weaver Boatworks’ day jobs) complain about running out of air.

No matter what compressor you use, though, compressed air tends to carry lots of water. And water in the air damages tools and creates havoc for painters.

Excell Refrigerated Air Dryer

After the compressor runs for 15 minutes or so, the air exiting the tank becomes warm enough to make the outlet port slightly warm to the touch even on cold mornings. Warm air carries more water, and you get drips from air tool exhausts after a while. When painting, this can be a disaster. I could significantly reduce the moisture in the air with an aftercooler between the high pressure side of the compressor to the tank, but I haven’t had time to make one. Since the air coming out of the tank doesn’t exceed 135*, I picked up a refrigerated dryer on ebay that can handle medium-temperature air. It works great. I put a filter before the unit to separate bulk water and particles, with a drop and valve to collect and drain water that condenses on the relatively co0l pipe wall. When it comes out of the dryer, the air is cool, clean, and very dry.

From the dryer it’s three feet over to another tee with a drop and valve at the bottom and a 10′ pipe up to the boat deck level. The iron pipe throughout the system acts as a passive aftercooler and helps to force any remaining moisture to condense on the cool pipe wall.

DeVilbiss QC3 filter and desiccant air dryer

This bad boy is the last filter in the fixed lines, and it captures whatever moisture or particles have managed to make it through the other components. The painter is happy with the results and says the air quality is good enough for spraying “the shiny.” Coming from a guy who paints multi-million dollar sportfish boats for Weaver Boatworks, where they’ve got a $40,000 compressed air system, I take that as high praise. 🙂

When we’re done with it, I may end up just selling this tent and equipment all together as a portable boat shop and spray booth…any takers??? 😉

This weekend we’ll longboard the Awl Quik we sprayed last weekend and, hopefully, spray the Awl Grip 545 prime coat on Sunday.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Longboarding the Cabin Top…and a surprise.