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I'm still waiting for some of the exhaust riser insulation components to show up, so I switched gears and made the battery cutoff/combiner switch panel. My painter is still recovering from his brother's untimely death, and he hasn't been to the boat to finish the V-berth. Winter is coming early this year, so I don't think the paint will get done until spring 2017. I'll keep plugging away on mission-critical stuff over the winter so when warm weather comes again, my painter can get in and get 'er done [hopefully] quickly.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Battery Switch Mount

Cheers
Q

Temps won't go above freezing today and tomorrow. With wind chill, it'll be below 0°F. So I think I'm officially declaring the end of the painting season for 2016. Fate has conspired to delay the v-berth head, toe rail, and a few other parts that need painting until it warms up in 2017. But I'm still steaming ahead with other stuff. I got the old raw water inlets cut out of the boat and the new ones test fitted.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Main Raw Water Inlets

Cheers,
Q

Old


New

My old Ford F150 was quickly returning to a state of nature, so I bought a new-to-me Nissan Frontier with low miles in the spring. After replacing an alternator, belts, tires, and tire air pressure sensors, the Nissan truck was working out pretty good. Then the missus crashed her car and had to use mine. Then the transmission failed catastrophically...during rush hour...on a bridge. So I don't have a vehicle to put my Miller Trailblazer in to go weld up the raw water inlet standpipes.

I still have the exhaust to finish, though, so I started cutting stainless to finish the risers. I left the shop on the final cut, only planning to be gone for a minute. That turned into 10 minutes. When I came back, I found the part had come unclamped and caused the bandsaw blade to lock up, frying the motor. Got a new motor, then discovered that the blade was shot.

My painter was going to paint the v-berth head last weekend, when we had warm weather for a couple of days. But his car broke down (another bad transmission!) and the guy who was giving him a ride hit black ice and crashed into a tree. Nobody got hurt, but the painter's out of commission until he can pay to get his car back from the shop.

I did manage to weld one bracket to the showerhead without killing anybody.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: My Life Is An Old-School Country Western Song

Cheers,
Q

This is why I don't believe things happen for a reason. Nothing you could've done in this life, or any previous life, could've led to this much bad karma.

I agree! Though I do have to accept blame for stupidly walking away from the shop with the bandsaw running. But wait!! There's more!!

$3,500 later, my truck transmission is fixed, but now it's running rough and tripping catalytic converter codes! Dang it!

But on the boat refit, I decided to use a combination of ceramic fiber blanket insulation and Inferno Wrap to insulate the dry sections of my exhaust risers, which I'll top with a layer of fiberglass and high temp epoxy to make the hard shell. The ceramic fiber blanket worked out real well. If I had to do over again, I'd skip the Inferno Wrap entirely. Aw well...lesson learned.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Insulating the Starboard Exhaust Riser

Cheers,
Q

I decided to make new safety rail stanchions to replace the four made from tubing that had been replaced at some point in the boat's life. The tubing stanchions are shiny, but you can't make proper NPT threads on tubing. The stanchion bases mount to the mahogany toe rail, and even though I sealed up all of the wood with epoxy I don't want water leaking past the threads. All it would take is a pinhole...

So, on the recommendation of some fabricator buddies, I first tried to have the new pipes threaded on a professional-grade machine. That didn't work out so well. The nice fellow at Home Depot cut the threads, but when I picked up the pipes he said something about the stainless being particularly hard and the threader die not being as sharp as it could be. Turns out he made the threaded area deform into a triangular shape. So, on the advice of other fabricator buddies, I bought some stainless nipples and welded them to the pipes. That approach turned out pretty good. I have to admit that having the tungsten sticking out 1" to tack the pipe to the nipple was unnerving at first, but it worked out really well.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Safety Rail Stanchions (again)

Cheers,
Q

Earlier this year, I got all of the remaining tinted glass I need but then discovered that some panes didn't fit. Some of them were my fault and others were the glass factory's fault. Either way, we finally got the issues resolved satisfactorily and the new glass arrived on the day after Christmas. The boat looks better with each piece that get installed. Let's hope I can pick up the pace and get this thing splashed before the end of the season in 2017.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Last of the New Tinted Glass Has Arrived!

Cheers,
Q

Over the New Year weekend, I dug back into my exhaust risers. I was hoping to get them both insulated and covered with a hard shell fiberglass layer, but the only good that came out of two days' work was that I added another 1" layer of that ceramic fabric blanket I'm using. The mandrel bends are so tight that I'm not able to get the fiberglass layers to lay down tight to the substrate and smooth. There's also a question of how to stop gravity from making the resin run to the bottom of the risers and drip off if I wet the fiberglass out enough to give a nice, shiny top coat appearance. Much as I hate to admit defeat, this one's got me stumped. I'm leaning toward just wrapping the ceramic blankets with Inferno Wrap and calling it done. If anybody has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: More Exhaust Riser Insulation

Cheers,
Q

This is taking me way back to my teenage R/C airplane building days, when I built a pattern plane or two with fiberglass cloth over balsa-sheathed foam-core wings. Fiberglassing was a PITA, but virtually bulletproof when done.

I Googled "Inferno Wrap", and as far as I can tell, it is a silica fiber cloth that is primarily marketed for wrapping human soft-tissue injuries, with a secondary market for wrapping exhaust pipes and such. Is this indeed the stuff in question?

From your pics, the Inferno Wrap does conform nicely to your insulated risers. Which leads to my next question. Does polyester resin care if it is being applied to silica fibers, as opposed to glass fibers? IIWM, I'd brush some catalyzed polyester resin onto a sample wrap of the Inferno stuff, and see what happens. My hunch is that both will be happy, and you'll wind up with a nice hard shell on the lovely organic shape of your Inferno Wrap.

P.S. Multiple thin coats of resin should preclude any dripping/sagging problems.

Dennis hit the nail on the head, if your after a smooth finish multiple thin coats will need to be built up and sanded. I personally do not see anything wrong with the wrap as its applied now over your insulation. I presume the exhaust pipes are in an area of limited traffic so hitting them and dislodging the insulation is unlikely. Many folks in the custom motorcycle field are using a similar wrap on the MC exhausts with good, durable results.