Future Brown Water Cruiser: 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit

[q240z]

The one thing that's absolutely got to be done before the boat can splash is to close up all of the holes below the waterline. The only holes remaining are the biggest ones: the raw water intakes for the Cummins 6CTA main propulsion engines. I had the new 2" intake pipes threaded by an incompetent and expensive dude a couple years ago. I recently realized he machined them with National Pipe Tapered threads, when the valve that threads onto them is NP Straight. So I took them to another machinist and had them rethreaded to NPS. I cut them to match the angle of the hull, then used my Miller Trailblazer 280NT and Spoolmatic to weld them from the outside. On the inside, I used my AlphaTIG and the homemade torch cooler I wrote about recently. After wire brushing the pipes inside and out, I applied two coats of Bar Rust 235 barrier coat and topped that with two coats of Pettit Vivid bottom paint, including inside the standpipes.

This is a big step toward getting the boat back in the water.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Main Engine Raw Water Intakes

Cheers,
Q

[Bowdrie]

How will you obtain a seal with NPS threads on both male/female threads?
Just lots of thread engagement with sealant?

[q240z]

As I understand it, NPS is standard on seacocks. Though I have found Groco seacocks that are NPS on the thru-hull side and NPT on the top side of the valve. The instructions for the Forespar Marelon valves I've got say to use teflon tape or paste thread sealant.

[q240z]

With the main propulsion engine raw water intakes finally welded in, next I installed the valves, strainers, and hoses. And that seals up the last of the holes below the waterline. With the exception of small details, like hose clamps and a few nuts and bolts, the boat could be splashed right now if I had to. But it's forecast to be 9°F for a low tonight and very cold through the end of 2022, so I plan to keep it in the tent and continue knocking out other priority parts of the project.

I did have a couple of hitches I ran into while installing the strainers (how could I not?!?!?) that I go into in more detail in the linked article. The worst were manufacturing defects in a brand new acrylic sight glass that resulted in cracks. Worse still is that the manufacturer, Buck Algonquin, is no longer in business. So I'm hoping my MacGyver solution will hold up for at least a few years.

In any case, this is great progress.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Raw Water Intake Valves and Strainers

Cheers,
Q

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by q240z

Worse still is that the manufacturer, Buck Algonquin, is no longer in business.

When did that happen? That's a huge loss to the boating community considering the range of products they made.

[q240z]

I'm not sure when, exactly, but it had to be between 2016 and recently. I agree, it is a huge loss. It appears an outfit I've never head of, Hydrasearch, bought the company or title to its name and intellectual property.

Now I wish I'd bought Groco instead!

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by q240z

I'm not sure when, exactly, but it had to be between 2016 and recently. I agree, it is a huge loss. It appears an outfit I've never head of, Hydrasearch, bought the company or title to its name and intellectual property.

Now I wish I'd bought Groco instead!

Darn. Although looking around, I'm seeing a bunch of stuff listed on the Hydrasearch website (under the commercial/recreational section) that looks an awful lot like Buck Algonquin's stuff. And I still see a lot of the stuff listed as available on various websites.

So that gives some hope that the product line is still available, although who knows about support.

[q240z]

I'd be happy if they'd get back to me on my initial inquiry...

Anyway, I’ve got a huge backlog of articles to write about stuff that’s been finished for a while. So I’m going to try and clear out as many as I can while we’re in this cold snap and it’s just too cold to do much of anything else. First up: the door to the v-berth.

I used half of a soft-close drawer slide for the slider hardware on this door, and it turned out soooo much better than I'd imagined. On a drawer, the soft-close feature pulls the drawer closed and holds it that way. It also prevents the drawer from being slammed shut. In this application, the soft-close feature pulls the door open the last few inches and holds it open without needing a latch. It also prevents the door from being slammed open.

The core of the door is Tricel, which is super strong and light. I topped that with mahogany veneers and ICA clear coat varnish, then finished it off with the rechromed OEM slider door handles from 1969.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The V-berth Door

Merry Christmas!
Q

[q240z]

Merry Christmas!

I'm on a tear, posting a bunch of articles of stuff I finished months to years ago. My camera's memory card was getting close to the limit, and if I lose it a whole lot of records of the refit would be lost. With the cold snap, it's a perfect opportunity to catch up and post this stuff.

The topic this time is the aft stateroom doors--the entry door and the slider for the aft head. I used the same process and materials as I did with the V-berth doors.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Doors

Q

[q240z]

It's still too cold to do anything outside or on the boat, so I'm clearing out content from my camera memory card. This article is about a switch plate I made for the LED lights in the aft stateroom head. I got tired of having to twist the wires together to turn on the lights and figured I might as well make a switch plate as long as I was installing a switch. I used a piece of 1/4" mahogany cut from a remnant leftover from when we cut the big 8/4 boards to the thickness I wanted. It turned out real purdy.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Head Light Switch Plate

Cheers,
Q

[q240z]

This boat came with a 75lbs CO2 automatic fire extinguishing system in the engine room. I decommissioned it when we were sandblasting the hull inside and out and left it that way until a year or two ago when I put it all back together...just never got around to posting the pics in my blog. I can say that re-arming the firing mechanism was a bit intense. I had my escape route cleared and doors and windows in the salon were all wide open. But it all went fine.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Recommissioning the Kidde CO2 Fire Extinguishing System

Cheers,
Q

[q240z]

It looks like the super cold arctic blast is finally moving on today, We'll be back to more typical winter weather, so I can get back to normal life and get stuff done outside of the house. It did give me a good opportunity to clear out my camera's memory card, though.

Today's topic covers some galley cabinet boxes I built back in the summer of 2019 but never posted. Building them allowed me to take another sheet of mahogany plywood out of the stack in the salon. As I've said before, the plywood stack is a sort of progress-o-meter on the project: when it's gone, the refit will be finished. It's getting pretty close. And the cabinet boxes didn't turn out too bad.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Galley Cabinets

Cheers,
Q

[q240z]

I switched my blog topics from galley cabinets to stainless because I'm in a bit of a bind and hope somebody can help me out.

I'm looking for some pre-2000, 1" solid-backed stainless rub rail. I seem to have misplaced about 18-feet worth, though I can't say for sure because none of the pictures I took at the beginning of this refit are sufficiently close-up in the right places...maybe they weren't there when we got the boat. Anyway, if anybody knows of any Purgatory Row, abandoned boats or soon-to-be-scrapped boats with these rub rails (#8 screws, 7-1/2" center-to-center) please let me know.

The particular stainless that's the topic of today's article isn't rub rails...it's salon window filler pieces and a gorgeous Made in Japan bronze step that came with the boat, which I had rechromed in 2013. I think they look fabulous.

Now...if only somebody knows of some old school 1" solid rub rail I might acquire...

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing More Stainless

Cheers,
Q

[q240z]

Before I can splash the boat, I've got to have hardware in place so I can tie it up to whatever dock I'm on. I installed chocks and cleats on the port and starboard side decks a couple months back, but the main attachment points are bollards on the bow and aft deck just above the transom. I had the original Chris Craft bronze bollards rechromed and just got them installed last week. I think they turned out very nicely.

The linked article also covers the Lofrans ProgressII windlass that I partially installed several years ago but never got around to writing about.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Fore and Aft Bollards

Cheers,
Q

Before


After


Installed

[q240z]

I finally got my trim tabs hooked up and working properly. The only problem I have with them now is the original tab angle (AKA Roamer Cruise Control) gauge. One of the resistors inside let the smoke out catastrophically, leaving nothing behind to tell me what value it was. I installed a resistor with the same ohm value as two other resistors in the gauge but can't get it to work on the boat. Off the boat, I can trick the needles into moving. Hooked up to the boat wiring, the needles don't budge. But if I hook up an incandescent bulb and run the tabs up and down, the bulb gets correspondingly dimmer or brighter. So the rheostats at the tab actuators are sending a proper variable ground signal... I'm stumped. But the gauge being out doesn't hold me up from splashing the boat, so I'm moving on to the next priority.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Recommissioning the Trim Tabs

Cheers,
Q

The starboard trim tab


The smoked gauge resistor