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: Refurbishing [hateful] Aft Stateroom Portholes

Chris Craft cruisers in the late 1960s came with cast aluminum portholes that open. The ones on my 1969 Roamer 46 came with built-in screens, which is a neat option my 1967 Constellation 52 didn’t have. Unfortunately, modern epoxy coatings were decades off in the 1960s, and the coatings Chris Craft used on their portholes were never intended to last more than a decade. The fasteners used to hold the portholes together and connect them to the boat were also an unfortunate choice: aluminum. The end result is that the OE portholes are hateful  things, with layers of failed paint covered by whatever coatings previous owners slathered on top (usually without sanding) and failed fasteners that have mostly turned to white powder.

Oh…and then there’s that damned sticky gray butyl(?) tape with fibers running through it that they used to seal the portholes to the interior paneling (sort of). Don’t even get me started on that!

Anyway, these things desperately need refurbishing. The process starts with disassembly.

3 portholes to disassemble

Autumn has arrived and the sun was heading into the west, but I thought I’d try to get these three disassembled in the two hours before dark.

Hateful aluminum screws

I’ve found the best way to remove the aluminum screws is to first use a slotted screwdriver and a light hammer to knock all of the old paint out of the screwhead slot. Pressing down firmly while twisting smoothly, I found the screws along the sides and at the top of the portholes tended to come out cleanly. The ones along the bottom edge of the portholes are evil things though, with the heads crumbling to white powder upon contact.

It’s funny though…when I managed to get a screw out whole, it made me very happy. 😉

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (screws, that is)

One screw came out cleanly. But the head of the one in the corner turned to dust, while only half of the head of the second bottom screw transformed to powder on contact. I think I know how early Egyptologists must have felt when they opened ancient tombs and found delicate fabrics and papyrus that turned to dust shortly after being exposed to air. lol

20 screws hold each frame component to the porthole

With all of the screws removed and uncooperative screw heads knocked off, very gentle application of a thin scraper pops the window retention ring off. Be careful though…these are all cast aluminum pieces and they can break very easily if you push too hard. For some strange reason, aluminum screws that turn to powder when you try to turn them with a screwdriver can have a tenacious grip on these cast retainers. My guess is that the goddess of the seas has a sense of humor and enjoys a bit of irony every once in a while.

Next, remove the hateful, headless screws from the portholes

Vise Grips work well…sometimes

Many of the hateful, headless screws simply turn to powder when you give them a twist with the pliers. This leaves aluminum in the threaded holes in the portholes that will need to be drilled out later.

Oh, and is it just me or are Irwin brand Vice Grips just not what they used to be? The jaws on the new set i bought last year are very sloppy. The rivets just don’t seem to fit like they do on one very old set I bought at an estate sale.

Glass pops out easily, leaving dry, powdery sealant behind

The sealant they used on these windows looks identical to what they used on the original bow seat windows. Actually, it looks like DAP window sealant for old fashioned wooden framed house windows. It’s very easy to work with at first and seals very well. But exposure to the elements makes it dry out, turning it into either a rock-like substance that cracks easily or powder, neither one of which have any sealing capacity. This is why water can leak past the glass and cause havoc with the aluminum screws and wooden paneling inside.

Fortunately, most of the original window sealant comes out easily

The DAP sealant is hateful stuff in the corners though

For some reason, the window sealant in the corners of these portholes is hateful, rock-hard stuff that needs a chisel to convince it to come out. Right next to the corners where it sticks so tenaciously though, there’s evidence of black mildew on the aluminum frame. Clearly, these areas were perpetually damp. It’s odd that the sealant stuck so well in the corners.

Latch dogs come out next

The latch dogs come out by first loosening the stainless lock nut then giving the big stainless screw a twist with a XXL slotted screwdriver.

Two hours later…

I was able to remove the panes of glass, glass retainer rings, the latch dogs and gaskets from two of the three frames. Roughly 40% of the original aluminum screws were hateful things that turned to powder. The latch dogs on the remaining frame will soak in a mixture of ATF and diesel for a day before I give them another go. On the fancy screen option, 100% of the screws that hold the screen retainer to the porthole frame refuse to budge. I stopped trying after six broke off in a row, and it took ten minutes to get to that conclusion. I plan to just drill them out in one go after I’ve removed all of the cooperative bits from the other portholes.

There are ten portholes in total and each one has 40 screws. Roughly half of those need to be drilled out, then all of the holes tapped before I can start prepping for paint. This could take a while.

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