The extra long 5/16-18 oval head Phillips machine screws that I need for the cabintop safety rails arrived!
Bad news!
There were only two in the package! The rest are back-ordered!
I kept thinking the company would strike-out on the back-order and cancel the rest. But just today I got two emails in a row, one saying the parts had arrived and the other saying they’d all shipped!
Booya.
So, to get the salon headliner installed, I need to wrap up just a couple of things: refurb the screens for the salon opening, install the mahogany panels in the same place, and then put in the screen slider tracks. Then the Whisper Wall installer can attach the tracks and start putting in panels.
These things are ugly
Fuzzy seal glue got left behind
Chris Craft put fuzzy screen seals on the frames to help keep bugs out. Whatever the glue was, it stuck to the aluminum a lot better than it did to the fuzzy strip.
Mechanical removal is the only thing that worked
Next, clean, polish and wax
Big difference between polished and not.
The focus was off in the above picture, but these frames clean up really nicely with some metal polish and wax.
The one on the left is don
Sloppy varnish job
Somebody really went nuts with the varnish on this boat. I have no idea how they’d end up with brush marks on this screen frame, but they did. Fortunately, it cleaned up well. Unfortunately, all of the other pictures of the screens are so badly out of focus they’re not worth posting. They sure did turn out nicely, though.
Back in November 2016, I polished the worst of the stainless safety rail stanchions. In December 2016, I made three new stanchions out of stainless pipe and pipe nipples to replace some that were curiously made of tubing. I moved on to other things before getting around to polishing the new stanchions, so they’ve been sitting in my garage, nicely welded together but with nothing but the mill finish. I took advantage of a warm day recently to try and put a polish on one of them.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
After sanding with 80 grit, the ugly starts looking better
Top to bottom in the above picture is a 50-year old OEM pipe stanchion, a mill finish stanchion as welded by yours truly, and another one I made that’s been sanded with 80 grit.
120 grit…looking better still
220 grit and it’s getting kinda shiny
Transition to 400 wet or dry, and it’s even more shiny
I keep an old Tupperware lid nearby with a bit of water in it to keep the wet or dry paper wet. It seems to last longer.
600 grit…gonna need protective eyewear for the shiny glare soon
After 1200 grit, the reflective quality is roughly equivalent to 6-pint beer goggles
My stockpile of sandpaper tops out at 1500
Time to switch up to polishing compounds.
The black colored compound stick really lit up that stainless!
The brown compound does an even more amazing job
WARNING! DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SHINY STAINLESS!
Seriously…this stuff could cause permanent eye damage on a sunny day
When polished stainless looks like chrome…
Well…that was fun. Two hours, including fancy polishing table setup time. I’ve only got two more of these to polish, plus about 15 of the OEM ones. But the really tough part will be polishing the curved pipes that go around the bow.
It takes pretty much a full day to sand and polish each 12′ stick of stainless rub rail, but I’ve got most of the pieces done. The only ones remaining are the V-shaped one at the bow and a 7′ long piece that for the life of me I can’t find. The pictures from late 2007, when the refit began, show there were rub rails all the way around. Hopefully, that last one will show up in my garage before long. If anybody in the Mid-Atlantic region has some spare 1″ rub rail, please let me know in the comments below.
Anyway, I made another polishing jig that I thought would speed up the process for the V-shaped bow rub rail. There were a lot of scratches there, presumably from the 6′ chain on the anchor rode. Which has me thinking I need to make a bow pulpit/roller so I can raise and lower the anchor easier and without damaging the shiny paint and aluminum. All in due time…
Good news!
The uninsured boat that exploded next to mine, damaging the tent, my new Awlgrip paint, and blowing out a window in 2015 finally got hauled away. It was still there on the day I polished the bow rub rail, then gone the next. Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me.
Two jigs to polish the bow rub rail
Lots of 1970’s paint residue and staining on the stainless
Then there are the scratches and gouges…time to break out the sander
First, I remove the scratches, paint residue, and stains with 150 grit
It was around this time that I realized two jigs were going to make the process longer than just one. While using two jigs allows me to clean up the top edge, which has lots of paint residue on it, I have to do the bottom edge separately after flipping the rail. Then it occurred to me that the KISS method (Keep It Simple, Stupid) was the way to go.
Turns out one jig works best
With one leg of the rail on the ground, the portion attached to the jig is at the perfect angle to sand and polish the face and both top and bottom sides in one go. I’ll just do all of the sanding and polishing on each leg separately.
After one pass with 220 grit , I follow up with 320 Wet or Dry and a dab of water
Next I hit it with 400 grit
Next is 600 grit, where the shine finally starts to come out
1200 grit makes it shinier still
I’ve had this stuff sitting in a drawer for 10 years!
The final sanding is done with 1500 grit.
The first polishing pass with black ebony compound
Wrap up the buffing with brown Tripoli and then white diamond compounds
Gouges at the bow? What gouges at the bow?
In the pic above, I’d finished the sanding course with 1500 grit. Even without polishing, it’s a lot shinier than the rail was before I started.
First buffer pass with black ebony compound, then brown Tripoli
Final pass with white diamond compound
And that’s a wrap!
Speaking of wrap, notice that in the pix above I’ve wrapped my buffer adapter (a commonly available 5/8″-11 coupling nut) and the bolt that holds it all together with masking tape. This acts as a pad so that when (not if) the buffer slips off the surface I’m polishing, the tape protects the surface from the rapidly rotating steel. I also double up the buffing wheels, which gives me more polishing surface to work with and seems to keep the pads on the stainless. With just one wheel, it was slipping off pretty regularly.
Well, until I find that other piece of stainless rub rail, I’m done polishing outdoors at the boatyard. I still have to polish the stanchion poles, but I’ll be doing that over the winter in my garage.
Bad news: my boatamalan* painter has gone off the grid. He came by the tent a month ago and we talked about next steps for the v-berth head. He was going to come by that Thursday and get to work. But when I arrived on the weekend, it was clear he hadn’t come by. Since then, he hasn’t responded to phone calls or text messages, and his coworkers have indicated that he doesn’t come to work regularly anymore. I know he’s been a disgruntled employee for a while now, and for good reasons by the sound of it, but he’s also had health problems. Since he doesn’t respond, I have no idea if he quit his job or is in the hospital. I haven’t given up on him yet, but for now all paint operations are suspended indefinitely.
* Boatamalan: portmanteau indicating highly skilled boat workers of Central American origin. They’re actually from Honduras, but Boatamalan rolls off the tongue better.
In the meantime, I’ve been polishing stainless…lots and lots of stainless…and also getting the glass installed in the portholes. On the stainless, it’s not just a trivial matter of making things pretty. Each rub rail and vent involves many screw holes and other openings into the boat, so they’ve got to be installed before I can even wash the dust off the outside. I’ve got the process pretty much nailed down, but each 12′ rub rail takes about 6 hours to polish, and more complicated pieces take even more time.
All the big trees around the tent have been removed
The tree removal crew got rid of the rotten old trees next to the tent without causing any damage. That’s pretty amazing considering how many big limbs were hanging over the tent. The tent’s a lot brighter inside than it used to be. In summer, it’ll be hotter, too. Gotta get this thing done…
9 portholes are ready to install, 5 to go
Lower rub rail is 16′ long, with a bend near the end
Two polishing jigs help hold it in position
The floppy end is hard to polish
2 screws and a broken board stabilize the floppy end
First, sand lightly to clean the surface and identify scratches and gouges
Use 150 grit to remove scratches and gouges
Next, go to 220 grit
Next, ramp up to 320 wet or dry paper dipped in water
Then 400 grit wet or dry
Followed by 600 grit wet or dry
Then 1000 wet or dry
1200 wet or dry
And finally 1500 wet
After sanding with 1500 grit, the stainless is pretty shiny. Hitting it with the buffer really knocks it home. There are three courses for buffing, first using black emory, then brown tripoli, and finally white diamond compounds.
I picked up a new polishing kit since my previous buffer pads were starting to come apart and throw lots of string. The Enkay kit comes with three pads and four different buffing compounds, and three of them — black emery, white diamond, and red rouge — are recommended for stainless. I have to say, using all three results in a noticeably better finish than the one-step compound I was using when I polished some of the rub rails before. I don’t know that anybody would notice standing on the dock 20′ away, but I suppose that’s the nature of labors of love like this.
Enkay polishing kit is a good value
Original but nasty vent
Unloved aft vent scoop
There are two bilge vents at the transom and three along each side of the toe rail. The boat came with both stainless scoops for the aft end of the boat and four of the larger scoops on either side. I haven’t had any luck finding the other two side scoops I need, but the stained and paint-spattered originals that I do have polished up quite well.
After an hour with the buffer
Before…not so shiny
After…SHINY!!!
The worst of the staining was on the lower edges
In addition to paint that a sloppy painter spooged along the lower edge when they did the enamel roll & tip job in the 1980s, there’s also white stains all around the lower edge that are extremely resistant to buffing. I think it’ll go faster and look better if I first sand the vents with 1200 and 1500 grit wet or dry, like I did with the safety rail stanchions, before buffing.
Cleaned up real nice…just took more time than it should have
The vents appear to be TIG welded
If I can’t find used replacements for the vents I need, I guess I can always order some stainless and use my AlphaTIG to make new ones. It’s not like I’ve got too many other things to do!
The safety rails need to be installed before a surveyor will sign off on the boat being ready to splash. We sanded and laid three heavy coats of West System epoxy with the 207 Special Clear hardener on the original mahogany rails back in August 2013, and they’ve been sitting ever since. Now that the safety rail hardware has been rechromed, I’ll install all the pieces in their old locations on the safety rail and use them as a guide for where to install the stanchion bases. Then I’ll remove the stanchion tops and bases, and we’ll put the final coats of Imron MS1 clearcoat on the mahogany toe rail and safety rail. But before I do the final installation, the stainless safety rail tubing needs to be sanded and polished. It’s not the most exciting work, but the results are visually apparent pretty quickly.
Unloved stainless steel safety rail stanchion
This stanchion has been sitting in a 5-gallon bucket full of other stanchions that easily came apart from their chromed bronze bases when we disassembled the boat way back in 2008 (YIKES!).
My new Porter Cable quarter sheet sander
I like this sander so far. It’s lightweight and fits well in my hands. The locking tabs are robust, and the pad can be used with stick-it or plain-backed paper.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
The other two stanchions in the pic above did not separate easily from their bronze bases. While the rest of the stanchions were in a bucket under the boat, these sat in my garage, where I applied penetrating oil to them over the last year. When I finally got around to applying heat to them and separating them from their bronze bases, I got a bit of a surprise. One foot away from where they were sitting was a closed gallon jug of muriatic acid that I’ve used to clean heat exchangers. The side of the stainless that was facing the jug of acid had clearly been attacked by acid vapor. There’s extensive pitting and surface rust, but only on that side. I have no idea how acid vapors escaped the sealed plastic jug, but that’s clearly what happened. It’s going to take a lot more than a light sand and polish to clean these up.
The center one is the worst
The stanchion at the top with all of the surface rust actually cleans up pretty easily. That center one, though, has pretty deep pitting.
Even the nicest one has deep gouges
I assume that at some point, somebody put a pipe wrench on this one and gouged it. I hit it with a buffing wheel on my modified Makita polisher, and it shines up pretty well. But the gouges don’t look good, even shined up. It’ll take some pretty course sandpaper to remove that.
150 grit does a pretty good job on the deep gouges
A little bit more with 150 grit, then switch up to 220
Then switch up to 400 grit wet or dry paper
The stanchion with surface rust cleaned up nicely with just 400 grit
After sanding down specific rough spots, I sanded the entire surface of each tube using 400 grit wet or dry. After clamping the paper to the pad, I dip the paper in a shallow pan of water and roll the tube back and forth while rotating the sander to use the entire surface of the paper. It doesn’t look especially coordinated in the video below, but the hand I’d normally use to steady the tube was occupied holding the camera. I was at the 1,000 grit stage in the video, but the motion is the same for all of the grits.
Replace the paper, dip the paper, sand and roll…then repeat
Tedious…but the results are looking good
Rust and pipe wrench gouges are gone at 400 grit
The pitted stanchion isn’t perfect, but it’s getting there
That’s about as much time as I’m willing to spend on the pitted stanchion
There are still some pits visible, but I spent an hour just on this one and removed quite a bit of material. Once it’s polished, I think it’ll look fine.
Surface rust? What surface rust?
600 grit on the center stanchion starts bringing out the shine
600 grit on the pitted stanchion…not too bad
1000 grit on the right side, 600 on the left
1200 grit is looking pretty good
1500 grit on the middle tube…pits? What pits?
It took a solid six hours to get these three stanchions ready for the polisher. Fortunately, none of the rest of the stanchions have the severe pitting and rust problem, so depending on how badly the gouges are I’ve got the sanding process down to about one hour per tube. I’ve also got two much longer, curved tubes that serve as the bow safety rail, so they will take more time. Fortunately, they only have surface stains, so I can start with 400 grit there. Unfortunately, my modified Makita polisher doesn’t work well with tubes. For that, I need to use my bench grinder/polisher in my garage, which I’ll be doing over the next several weeks in my spare time.
With the muffler platforms installed, I’m getting close to being able to make the exhaust risers. I’m working out how to make square cuts on 4″ stainless tubing, since it turns out the 4 x 6 metal cutting bandsaw I bought doesn’t track straight on long cuts. This is apparently a common problem, and exhaust fabricators sometimes use bandsaw blade guides to ensure square cuts. I’d prefer not to buy $300 worth of tools I’ll use just once and that aren’t in especially high demand. But while I stew over this and adjust my saw per some instructions online enthusiasts of these saws recommend, there are plenty of other things that need doing…like polishing the rub rails, since they represent the single biggest source of open holes on the exterior that need to be filled before the boat can exit the tent.
Sanded with 500, then 800, then 1000 grit sandpaper
I’d previously sanded the rub rails and then installed them to protect the new Awlgrip paint from incidental contact with the Tent Model X upright frames during storms and days with very high winds. Even then I knew I’d have to remove them all to polish the rub rails and then reinstall. It’s tedious having to do the same job twice, but they served their purpose and protected the paint.
First pass with the rouge…big difference
It takes about three minutes to polish each section between the screw holes.
Section by section, the rails get polished
There are ~40 screw holes per 20-foot stick of rub rail.
Shiny!
Fortunately, there’s immediate gratification in this job. It’s tedious, but the pay-off is worth it.
All the way to the far end
After working my way down the rail with the coarser pad and rouge, I have to do it all over with the fine pad and polishing compound. But first, I’ll do the first polish pass on the rest of the rails.
Nice before/after contrast
Hello…what have we here?
The black goop on the back-side of the rub rail in the picture above is the original 1969 bedding compound that Chris Craft used. It came off with the rail when we first started the project back in 2007~08, and exposed slightly corroded aluminum below. What I noticed here (and elsewhere) is that the bedding compound that stayed attached to the stainless was close to the screw hole.
Another spot where the OE bedding compound, paint, and primer pulled away from the aluminum hull
I took the pic above after I’d already used a razor blade to remove the original bedding compound, paint, and primer. When bedding compound, paint, and primer all pull away from the aluminum below, it means water got under the primer.
The source of the paint and primer failure?
Each screw hole has a very slight ridge around it that wasn’t reamed or sanded smooth back in 1969. The ridge isn’t enormous, but it’s on the back-side facing the paint and is at least as thick as the paint. With vibration over time, I’m speculating that the ridge filed its way through the paint and primer, letting water react with the aluminum molecule by molecule. This, plus the fact that the original screws were not installed using TefGel, might explain why the paint sometimes fails on these boats in the vicinity of the rub rails.
Before polishing, each hole gets deburred and sanded flat
Another one down, another to go
I ran out of rouge and have ordered more, but I made good progress on getting the rub rails polished. This is a good “time filler” when I run out of supplies or need parts on some other job. I’ve got the process worked out, and with the deburring and sanding to remove the ridge on the backside, hopefully once the job is done I’ll never have to polish these again.
1969chriscraftroamer46 