My First Woody

This is my attempt to document every step of the way of my restoration process of my first purchase of a Classic Chris Craft. I’ve seen other blogs of restorations in process and that has inspired me to do the same, they really helped me out and I learned some tips & tricks and hopefully by doing this it could also help someone along the way in the future as it did me.

Why & how did I decide on this quest?

My Dad took me to a classic wooden boat show years ago, a very long time ago, in fact I can’t remember when it was…He had built his own sailboat in his drive way in 1953, a Penguin and she still sails to this day.

I’m a career Sailor, U.S.N. I completed six years active duty and the rest in the Reserves until I retired as a Boatswain’s Mate Chief in 2013. I was mobilized in 2006-2007 during Operation Iraqi Freedom with an Inshore Boat Unit deployed to Kuwait protecting our High Valued Assets as they loaded & offloaded equipment. It was while sitting in the boat house on break one day that I stumbled upon a yacht book; you’ve seen them with all of those expensive beautiful yachts. That got me thinking/dreaming rather of owning one of these beautiful boats some day. I joked about it to some crew members that “mark my words one of these days I’ll have a yacht of my own”.

2007

Once back in country, I started surfing the Internet and came across a 34 foot Chris Craft Constellation, “Perseverance”; I was hooked from that moment on. She was beat up really bad, and neglected, but that got the juices flowing. So I began looking at all of the Chris Craft models, now I’m looking for a restorable 34-35 foot Constellation.  In 2009 I joined the Chris Craft Antique Boat Club,  and started receiving my issues of the Brass Bell. I also joined the BYB {Bone Yard Boats}. I purchased several restoration books, and basically started researching as much about owning and restoring an old wooden boat as I could. {I highly recommend the book written by Don Danenberg “The Complete wooden runabout Restoration Guide”}. I drove to Minnesota to look at my first 30 foot Connie in person and that’s when I realized 30 feet is too damn big! Being in the Navy has had its benefits and at the time I was stationed at Great Lakes. I worked at ACU-1 (Assault Craft Unit One) which has its own boat house to house the LCM-8 {Landing Craft Mechanized} boats , but now MPFUB’s {Maritime Preposition Force Utility Boats}. While there, I inquired about boat slips for retirees and the cost of storage etc…Again, 30 feet for my budget, was going to be too big & too expensive! So back to the internet and years of surfing later, I decided on a 25-27 foot range. This would easily fit beside my garage, and I could work on her until she was sea worthy again. So back up to Minnesota once again to look at a possible candidate.

                       

 1954 26 foot Chris Craft Day cruiser, well this one was beat up pretty bad, so I decided to pass on this one. Couple years later I found a 28’ constellation in Louisiana but both engines were bad and besides that, the beam was 10ft wide… that means permits are required to trailer. I’ll have to pass and look for a smaller boat.

July 2013

            Well, I finally found the boat! She is a 1955 Chris Craft Sedan with Fly Bridge in pretty good shape with a bull nose! 26 foot 8” in length with an 8 foot 6” beam. Beautiful boat but I know beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but I like her just fine.

making the purchase.

Minor Delay in the budget

What to do, what to do? I decided to take a hit to the budget for something that I’ve been wanting to get for a long time now, and decided to go ahead with the purchase. I by no means am a millionaire, I wouldn’t even classify myself middle-class, and work too damn hard for what I do have, so It was either buy the wood,

 

 

or buy this.

Sig Sauer MK25

 

I look at it this way…the hard part for my retirement project is over, I have the boat, and time is on my side (God willing) to restore her proper and make her sea worthy again. So I pulled the trigger (literally) and went ahead and purchased the fire arm that I’ve been looking at for a long time now.

The Sig Sauer P226 MK25. I’m not a gun nut, far from it…I’m not getting paranoid, well…maybe a little bit, but decided to go ahead because there are just too many crazies in the world. Why a handgun vs shotgun? Simple, I can conceal carry a handgun & I already have the shotgun.  I’ve got a pretty great little small U.S.A town to live in, but it’s getting worse, which really bothers me. Of all the small town U.S.A. communities in America, our crime is rising along with theft & heroin drug use. Drug use is everywhere I guess, but Heroin in my small town was a shock…Kills me to see such a great town get worse. I can’t wait to actually retire from my real job, and move to a nice home on a lake, whether it be the Great lakes, or anywhere somehow connected to the Great river road, ie…the http://www.greatloop.org/ which is the dream for me anyway.

Why the expensive Sig? Lots of reasons, for me anyway.

1. Prior military

2. Prior Navy military

3. It’s the absolute “go to war” pistol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGNyQs8pjNo

{“yes it’s a long review” as all of “nutnfany reviews are”, you could skip ahead to 18:35 for the skinny on the MK25, but imo they are pretty good/entertaining. (the videos)}

4. The exact handgun the Navy Seals use, which thanks to Sig Sauer they have now released it for civilian use.

5. It has the Navy Anchor on it…”how could you go wrong with that”? lol, being a retired Navy Chief, it’s just something I had to have! There…I admit it. And…it’s a cool hand gun.

I’m use to doing this

when I was in the Navy, which allowed me to shoot everything under the sun from 50 cal, M240, M16, M4, M9, shotgun etc etc, so when I saw the opportunity arise for me to purchase the MK25, I decided I would go ahead and get it to add another layer of safety for my family.

I don’t know… with all the craziness going on in the world today, I just felt it was time.

 

 

Cabin Top/Sides Removed

I am ecstatic that I have reached my goal for the year! Now I can relax a bit and worry about other things that have to get done. But man what a hot week to work on the boat. Temps were only in mid to high 80’s but it was the humidity that killed me, 100% Humidity. I changed clothes twice in less than 5 hours. Soupy days for sure!

Plywood removed from cabin top.

take a break & clean up a bit

Removed.

And just like that, top is off. Ok, not really…it was a total pain in the rear end to get off, actually it took me 3 days to remove this part. As I suspected I found some rot in the upper top corners of both windows. In my research on many articles, this is a reoccurring theme in all Chris Crafts. Always in the windows, so I will have to address this when replacing the wood and re-installing. In the above pic if you look in both the front left and right ends of the planks you will see what I mean.

Now it’s time to remove the bulkheads, and the sides.

 

Lots of screws

Damn, where are the bungs?

sand to find the bungs.

So I was on a bung hunt to figure out where the bungs were at so I could access the screw heads, after you see the initial pattern it’s pretty easy to figure out where the next bung should be. Inside the cabin they filled all of these holes with famowood. Chris Craft uses a staggered screw pattern.

Starboard side down.

Port side down

Done. A little clean up, put things away, drink some beers, and call it a day. I took off Thursday afternoon, and Friday, and worked on removing this section until the end of Saturday to get it done, so it wasn’t just a day job, but man am I glad I got er done! Now I can relax a bit.

Next up, take out the gas tanks, and flip the boat. Well that’s not on this years agenda, so we’ll see how it goes. Cheers!

2014 Pewaukee Antique/Classic Boat Show

This would make for a cool bar!

Worked from 5am til 8am, then took a Harley ride down to the Pewaukee Classic Wooden Boat show. I probably should have mentioned that I was a new member, but I couldn’t really do anything that weekend anyway, as I had to work in the morning. Soooo, I just looked at the boats and took some pics.

Lady Hawk

30′ 1984 Hacker Craft, pretty nice boat!

 

In the mood

I like the inner wood slats on this boat, think I may copy that for the inside look of my cabin? Hmmmm.

Louise

Brown Eyed Girl

This was my favorite at the show, when I went to vote, I forgot the number of this boat and accidentally voted for the wrong boat for peoples choice. Ooops!

Nice

Sentimental Journey

Nice name! Good looking boat too!

Neat lil Sedan

“Remedy” has some cool vents in the transom

So after the boat show, I rode down to the knuckle in Eagle WI, for lunch, and then back home, so I didn’t get any work done on the boat Saturday!

Today, however, I got a lot done!

Port Side windows removed.

Cabin Top coming off, little by little. I removed the windows in the fwd cabin windshield.

I removed the Stbd cabin molding off the top, and figured out how to take off some trim pieces in the aft cockpit. Lots of picking paint out of the screw heads so they can be removed is pretty tedious work, but relaxing too, however working under the tarp isn’t the most fun, pretty hot under there.

Supposed to rain tomorrow evening, so hopefully I’ll be able to get more of the port side done before the rain moves in, actually its supposed to rain most of the week. All be told, it was another successful weekend, and it’s mid August.

I still need to remove the cabin top completely and the sides, build some kind of support for the tarp to get me through the upcoming winter. So still lots to do for this year. Cheers! 🙂

Cabin Removal

I have been plugging away at removing bungs, and bit by bit taking apart the cabin top. I removed all of the 1/4 round trim on the exterior, but got side tracked with these yellow jackets that kept buzzing around me. My boat currently is on the trailer, parked next to my garage. As I was removing the Port side trim around the cabin, I can sit on the garage with my legs on the boat and work on removing bungs on the trim. Every time I would get comfortable to remove a bung, here comes this damned Yellow Jacket. I have to get up, back away up towards the peak of the roof, and spray these bastards. Why do they like my boat so much? As the cycle of life would have it, they are in there last stage of nesting, and need my wood to make new nests! Ah Haaa! So where are they coming from?

Turns out I was standing over there nest! Lucky I didn’t get stung. So I went on a yellow jacket hunting rampage.

Yellow Jacket nest 1 of 3

 

Yellow Jacket

Nest 2 of 3

The mother load 3 of 3…

Most dead

Some dead

I didn’t get them all, but it gave me some satisfaction, so I could get back to work.

removing trim

ugly rot in the cabin window

Fly bridge window removed

fly bridge trim

I have all the trim removed around the cabin top, and the bottom. I have removed the fly bridge window and I have the hatch removed & trim. At this point I had to throw the tarp back on in case it rains, which is in the forecast for tomorrow. Makes the boat a lot hotter to work under the tarp, but It gets rid of the yellow jackets…ha ha. Sorry for the yellow jacket story, but after getting stung last year, I didn’t want to go thru it again.

On to the windows inside the cabin, I sketched the trim, and took a bunch of pictures, then began removing the trim & pulling out the stbd side windows. While doing this i found something interesting that Chris Craft did. Copper pipe drains in the corner of the windows. Hmmm that’s pretty interesting.

copper pipe drain hole

copper pipe drain hole exit out below the window.

thought that was pretty neat!

starboard windows removed.

Now I have the Stbd (starboard) side trim & windows removed, this weekend I will get the Port side windows out and the front windshield out. Then it’s the top and sides. I don’t know how far I will get tomorrow as I have to work in the morning at my real job, and it’s the Pewaukee Classic Boat show tomorrow as well. So depends what time I get back from that.

Name tag

Got my name tag in the mail today…Wahooo! Hopefully I’ll have the cabin top off by next post. And I will have reached my goal for the year!

 

 

Helm station & Gemmer steering box removed

Not too difficult to remove. I started pulling some wooden bungs out, actually I removed all 6 bungs in the front of the helm station because I thought I would have to remove the wood panel in order to remove the steering box due to the column going through the panel, but after it wouldn’t budge, and after closer inspection, I saw that they used (they being Chris Craft assemblers) used glue as well as the screws to really secure this panel.

Steering column going through panel.

Looking closer and jumping down into the main cabin behind the helm station, there are 6 screws per side of the helm station. After removing the screws the whole helm station was loose.

Helm Station removed.

Of course I had to remove the transmission/throttle levers, but that simply unbolted, remove some cotter pins to the arms below and et’ voila done!

Next I decided to remove the pillow block below and remove the steering box as a complete unit. I did this because I was unsure of the galvanized pipe that connected to the pivot arm, and it looked pretty simple to take out in this way, which it was.

galvanized pipe connected to pillow block/pivot arm.

Gemmer Steering box removed.

Complete steering box unit removed.

Bad seal.

Helm station/ transmission levers/throttle levers.

Another successful weekend, with both engines removed along with the Helm station, it will be back to removing bungs & finding screws to completely remove the cabin top. I’ll tear down & rebuild/replace the seals/paint the gear box, , but that’s a winter project that can be done in the house.

Engines Removed

Today started for me at 0430 when my alarm went off. Wait…I’m not working today, I’m off, it’s Saturday, oh yea…I told my boss I’d be driving my boat in at 0600 to pull both engines. Snooze….

Alarm goes off again, now it’s 0445, Screw it I’ve got a lot to do so I better get up. Cup of coffee and out to the boat, have to make sure all that I have to do when I get to the shop is just pull the 4 lag bolts holding the engines in place.

Got the truck hooked up to the boat, I think I’m ready, pull the boat out onto the street, wait…I’m missing something, my plug in for the trailer brake controller! Crap, where is it…? An hour later, frantically looking all over inside the truck (where it should be), all over the garage, nope, can’t find it. Better call the boss. He has one, but it’s not the same connection for my trailer…Screw it, it’s just a couple blocks to work, I’ll risk it without trailer brakes.

I got the boat backed into the shop without any problems, but it’s later in the morning, and they only work on Saturdays until 10am, so I’d better hurry. Pulled the first engine and thought I’d be able to get it out without removing the exhaust pipe. Nope, she’s gonna have to come off too.

Two hours later, I have both engines out. Broke the exhaust from the flange though, (Dammit) Oh well, I’m a welder, I’ll just weld her back together. I’ll drive the boat back to the house and park her, then return and pick up one engine at a time & transfer back to the garage for storage.

Pulling the Engines

Happy they came out ok.

Getting the engine out of the truck.

Stored for the time being, until I’m ready to have them refurbished.

Port side engine removed.

Stbd side engine removed.

Little warm in the boat today!

Think I’ll take a break for a bit, Drink some cold ones & cool down, Man it’s a hot one today!

Nice surprise in the mail box today. Thank you Chris Craft.org

Good to go…Now I can continue on the gear box/linkage removal. Cheers.

 

Chris Craft Rendezvous 2014

We are back from vacation. It was a driving vacation…From our home here in Wisconsin we drove to visit Port Orchard WA, Seattle WA, Astoria OR, some snowboarding/skiing at Mt. Hood, Grand views of the Grand Canyon, Four Corners, Ship Rock, Arches National Park in Utah, and to visit my brother in Colorado. All in all it was a great trip. I got to see the Chris Craft Rendezvous in Port Orchard WA, and the wife/son got to visit Pikes fish market & Space Needle. Best part of the trip for me was the Chris Crafts of course, I think the wife liked the fish market the best & our son liked snowboarding & Arches National Park the best.

25th Annual Chris Craft Rendezvous

 

Where we stayed in Port Orchard. Great Views.

 

This was my favorite

Black hulled Corvette

I wish I would have had more time, we were too early (they do like to party at night), and when we were walking the pier everyone was still waking up, so none of the boats were open to board at that point, and we had to go over to Seattle. But it was all good.

paddle boat races

Just a ton of Beautiful Chris Crafts. Loved it. Way too many pictures to post, so that was just a sampling. It was great.

Navy base in the background.

Public Market

Columbia River Maritime Museum

Landscape Arch

Well enough about vacation…it’s over! Time to get back to working on the boat, and with that said…I’m happy to report that the shaft couplings have been removed, and the shafts are out! 🙂 Next will be to dis-assemble the gas lines/electrical from the engines, and they will be ready to be pulled out.

Starboard side coupling/shaft removed.

Port side coupling/shaft removed.

Well that’s all for today, hopefully next post the engines will be removed.

 

 

 

Unseasonable rainy June, & my list of excuses

Well it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog, but I ran into a snag.

First off, it was a terribly rainy June which kept me from the boat, or was it the Gemmer Steering box? Hmmm, I’ll say it was both.

As I was removing the helm station, the Gemmer Steering box will have to be removed, & I didn’t know how to do it,  so I reached out to http://www.chris-craft.org/ for some answers, but didn’t produce results I needed. In order to remove the Gemmer steering box I need (i think) to remove the pipe that goes from the bottom of the steering box to the linkage arm. But there is simply no room to maneuver to un-clamp the linkage arm, so because I need to remove both engines anyway, I stopped working on that & moved towards removing the engines.

Picture of the pipe I’m referring to.

Linkage Arm clamp

As you can see there in the above pic, there is no room to work… So this is why I decided to just stop here, and remove the engines.

So what’s the first thing you have to do before you remove the engines? Remove the Props, Prop shaft, disconnect everything that is connected to the engine ie…gas lines, electrical, etc…

Props lubed up with penetrating oil.

I removed the nuts fairly easy.

Prop Nuts

This was the easy part… Personally I have never removed the props before, so I went to my friend Youtube and found a good video on it.

After viewing this video I realized I was going to need a Prop Puller. I called the local Marina here to see if I could borrow one, the guy didn’t have a clue to what I was talking about. I looked some up on the internet, and the cost was anywhere from $70.00 bucks to over $100.00 bucks. Not in my budget right now…Hey I’m a welder…I’ll just make my own.

acme_puller

This is the Internet $70.00 dollar model.

Home made prop puller

This is my version for Free99. We had an old crappy C-clamp at work and I just fabricated this small modification to see if it would work. I removed the screw pad so that the ball would fit nicely into the end of the shaft. I used WD40 penetrating oil to soak for several days to loosen up the key-way but to no avail, this prop was being very stubborn.

Well I took a break, a long break, went on a couple Harley rides with some friends,

Mischlers Mystery Ride

J&P Cycles ride

 

the rain finally cleared, I called some folks who gave me some further advise on what to do, and then I had a co-worker come over today to give me a second set of hands to remove these stubborn props.

Success! Thanks Lester.

It took some doing but Thanks to Lester, we got them off.

Not the best picture, but these key ways were really rusted into the props.

Finally these bad boys are off. What a way to spend the 4th of July! Actually it wasn’t that bad, but It definitely was a two man job.

Next up I’ll remove the shafts, drive the boat over to work to pull the engines. I think I’ll research a lot more before pulling the shafts…”not so funny story I found online… http://www.diybob.com/diyShaftRemoval.htm

But before that happens it’s vacation time and we are headed to Seattle for the largest gathering of Chris Craft cruisers…the Chris Craft Rendezvous http://www.chriscraftrendezvous.com/ I hope to have some great pics so i’ll update when I get back.

Until then…Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

Helm Station

Current Helm Station

This is what the Current set up is on my boat, which isn’t bad, just isn’t correct.

Correct Helm station

This is how it should look! So research, research, look for the correct gauges. Found some through Bone Yard Boats, and have them but they too need to be restored. I’ll have Dale restore them http://www.ccgauges.com/.

Old new gauges

These will be restored and calibrated to brand new. I’ll make a new panel mount for the gauges & switches to sit in, and it will be one more step closer to being correct, but for right now that is the last thing on my mind. Right now…it’s electrical.

Electrical Mess

Looking into the fuse box thru the bulkhead where the helm station panel top has been removed.

Helm station cleaned up

Now to get all those wires traced, take a million pictures, and remove.

underneath gauge panel

I started getting all technical, and tracing out where every single wire was going & took pictures to back it up, “they say a picture is worth a thousand words”, and it started getting pretty hectic with all the wires.

Mess of wire

Then I realized, I’ll just leave them hooked onto the terminals, pull them down thru the helm cavity and put them as neatly as I can into a box in the engine compartment until I’m ready to re-install them, besides, I’m a long way away from doing that and I have a million pics of them and I have an electrical genius in my back pocket at work, so instead of fretting about the whole thing. I’ll just come back to that when it’s time. I plan on updating all of the wiring anyway…But some great video’s are out there, thanks to Off Center Harbor.com

http://tour.offcenterharbor.com/  with assistance from Jamestown distributors,http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/main.do  there is some great information on untangling Marine electrical systems.

There is so much more to learn, but to me that’s half the fun!

So some other things I have completed this weekend besides the electrical mess, was to remove the windshield washer motors,

Windshield wiper motor.

and dis-assembled the Helm,

Helm removed.

which brings me to the marine steering box!

Gemmer Marine Steering box.

In most all of the Pre-war & Post-war Chris Crafts our marine steering box’s are made from Gemmer. Mine is leaking, so I will tear this down & rebuild with new gaskets. Thank goodness Chris Craft.org had an article on this.Gemmer_Steering_Gear_from_BB-Fall-2007.

So all in all another great weekend. Cheers!

 

 

Starboard Side cabin removal

5/31/2014

Today I am removing the starboard side seating stringers under the dinette, and the head.

Before removal.

After.

That was pretty easy. Next is the Head.

Inside this head we have the typical sink, mirror and of course the toilet.

I have a great friend coming up from Milwaukee today to assist me in tackling the head removal, should be pretty easy.

The toilet removal was about the easiest part of the whole job, unscrew two wires and because the base was broken, just lift and remove, simple. Next is the sink.

The first thing you have to do is find the screws that hold the sink in place, sounds simple but years of paint covering the bungs that are hiding the screw heads…not hard but not that easy either. 

But we found the screw heads and Ta-Da…the sink has been removed. Now we simply have to remove the bulkhead separating the head from the outer cabin. this turned out to be the hardest part of the job, in fact I didn’t get it out until the next day. Dave my buddy from Milwaukee came up and brought his son Noah to assist with the job.

In determining how to un-attach this bulkhead we were again trying to find the screws, and after much hunting, finding & removing them realized that some were attached from above through the cabin top. Well the cabin top still has the vinyl attached so off we go to remove the vinyl top covering the cabin.

Noah, removing some screws in the Head bulkhead. 

Removing the vinyl top so we could get to the hidden screws. Thanks for all the help guys, you did an awesome job.

The vinyl cover has been removed…all that yucky brown residue is the old glue they used to attach the vinyl to the top. It wasn’t holding anymore and  was all dried up, so surprisingly to me it wasn’t messy at all. Just looks messy, but dry to the touch. With the vinyl cover removed I only found two screws from the top that was holding the bulkhead, the rest were inside covered in paint, I ended up using my cut-off tool to remove the rest of the screws to get the bulkhead out.

Pretty ugly looking cabin top now.

This is the original cabin top.

The bulkhead freeing up and getting closer to being gone.

Finally…Got it out! That was not easy but she’s gone for now.

What was cool about taking the vinyl top off, was being able to see where the original mast step/horn was originally. I didn’t see it at first, but noticed it today while climbing around looking for more screws. Hmmm, I wonder if the one I purchased off of Ebay will fit. I hope its the correct one.

Well look at that, fits like a glove.

Now I have the exact reference point to put it back on when the new cabin top is complete.

17 1/2″ from the window point to the mast base. Perfect!

Well that was another successful weekend! Thanks to both Dave & his son Noah for helping out, you guys did great! The thunder storms are rolling in, so I’m going to call it a day for this weekend. Next up will be taking apart the helm station.