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Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 11:38 pm
by BuckeyeDennis
Congratulations, Q! If anyone could do it, it would be you!

Several years ago, I had a lucrative product-development consulting gig with a startup that was well financed by a private equity firm. All went swimmingly for a year or two, until the PE firm brought in a new COO who turned out to suffer from full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. In just a few short months, he destroyed years and several million dollars worth of progress, and the key members of development team began leaving. So I first got buy-in from the remaining team members, and then tried to intervene with the PE firm while there was still something to save. But they didn’t want to listen. Fortunately, both I and the rest of the team were in a position to simply walk away.

Part of me wanted to go after the COO with guns blazing. The guy posesssed a degree of toxic incompetence that was simply astonishing, with no parallel in my 30-odd years of management experience. But after careful reflection and consultation with advisors, I realized that I had nothing to gain from doing so. And I would definitely have made enemies, so there was potential for a real downside.

I wanted to share that story for a couple of reasons. First, it shows that that sort of incompetent crap is not isolated to the public sector. And second, while revenge may be sweet, it should be carefully weighed against what’s in your own long-term best interest.

Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 7:00 pm
by roamer46
JPG wrote: Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:23 amI hope you are able to "sock" it to the idiots responsible.
Alas, JPG, Congress and the courts have created an environment in which corrupt bureaucrats are personally isolated from their illegal professional actions. My lawyer tells me that the chances of getting a DC jury (D) to convict a bureaucrat (D) of a crime is practically nil. He's quite certain any such suit would be tossed out. BUT termination from federal employment for my former supervisor is one of my non-negotiable demands for settlement. If there's to be any compromise at all, I'd rather get less cash and see him canned and made radioactive (like he made me).

Revenge, as Kahn rightly observed, is a dish best served cold.

Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2022 7:15 pm
by roamer46
Speaking of revenge being best served cold...
BuckeyeDennis wrote: Sat Jun 25, 2022 11:38 pmwhile revenge may be sweet, it should be carefully weighed against what’s in your own long-term best interest.
Dennis, I absolutely appreciate your input. But my attorney has told me that, having joined the elite 1% of fired federal employees who win cases for discrimination and wrongful termination at the EEOC level, I am fire-proof going forward. Not only will I sue immediately if they try that nonsense again, it's apparently highly unlikely that I'll ever be supervised by the same sort of narcissistic psychopath as my former supervisor. EPA's Human Resources and Civil Rights Divisions will both know my name and my record, and its unlikely they'll try for a second bite at this particular apple.

There's something really funny that I'd love to share with you, but this is the internet, where nothing is secret. But once the settlement comes through, I'm going to oversee something rather...bold...historic, even. But that doesn't have anything to do with my boat refit or my ShopSmith, so I won't spend any time on it here. I will almost certainly mention it in my Roamer blog and elsewhere, though. So do stay tuned!

Cheers,
Q

Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:30 pm
by chapmanruss
Q,

I have enjoyed reading this thread even though I have not commented until now. It always amazes me what can be done with the Shopsmith tools.

It is nice to see your positive attitude in these recent posts. I am sure that has not been the case these last two years. You mentioned your union was worthless in this case. Have you and your lawyer looked at a case against the union for failure to represent? If they had been doing their job they should have been representing you throughout this process and by doing so covering legal costs.

Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2022 9:23 am
by roamer46
Thanks Russ!

The union broke many laws in my case. Unfortunately, with no source of income I had to focus my resources on my direct claims against the Agency. Bringing a case against the union simply wasn't possible given my employment status. And now there's a question of timeliness. I suspect (but haven't confirmed yet) that there is a statute of limitations on filing a claim against the union. Once the settlement phase is done and my income is restored, I may dig into that and see if it's worth pursuing.

Anyway, I've been getting back into the groove with the refit. But I'm finding that in the time I was away from it, I forgot where I put a bunch of tools, parts, and supplies. I spent a half hour sifting through the boat three times, looking for a particular size of cable clamp. I found my stash of clamps, but there were only larger and smaller sizes, not the size I was looking for. It can be very frustrating since I KNOW I've got a bag of that size somewhere.

Anyway, I finally found the clamps and got busy installing my Magnum Energy 2000w inverter charger. That's one thing off the list that's a wrap.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Magnum Energy Inverter/Charger

Cheers,
Q

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Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2022 11:21 am
by roamer46
Meanwhile, I'm back to wailing away on the Roamer refit, trying to get the boat ready to splash ASAP. Finishing the raw water system for the main engines is a high priority, and one of the things I needed to do was install thru-hulls for raw water tell-tales so I can confirm that the exhaust showerheads are getting good flow when the engines are running. I couldn't find exactly what I needed, so I made them instead using parts that were readily available: 3/4" mushroom thru-hulls in 316 stainless and 5/8" tubing to match what I welded to the showerhead. They turned out pretty good!

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making Raw Water Thru-hull Outlets

Cheers,
Q

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Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 7:33 am
by roamer46
I wrapped up the exhaust end of the main propulsion raw water system by making two pipes I used to connect the raw water outlet from the Cummins heat exchanger to the inlet on the exhaust riser showerhead. The problem was that the HEX outlet pointed directly at the riser and was only 3-1/2" away from it. When I made the risers, I figured I could either find a preformed hose that would route around the riser or I could take the HEXs to the radiator shop and have the outlets reoriented to point toward the showerheads. But I just decided it'd be best to use mandrel-bent stainless tubing and connect the pipes with short sections of 200-series no-wire marine exhaust hose and constant torque clamps.

As always, my Shopsmith 12" disk sander was essential gear in getting a super-tight fit between the tubing parts. It makes far stronger joints and is much easier to weld when the parts have perfect contact all the way around prior to firing up the TIG torch.

I also connected the 5/8" raw water outlet at the top of the showerhead to the thru-hull I made recently. That'll divert excess water from having to go through the mufflers and it's nice to have tell-tales to confirm that raw water is flowing properly. All I'll have to do is take three steps from the helm and peek over the safety rail to see if water is squirting out of the thru-hull.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Wrapping up the Exhaust Showerhead Plumbing

Cheers,
Q

The problem
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The solution
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Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2022 6:41 am
by roamer46
With one end of the raw water system for the mains done, I moved on to the fuel system.

The tanks are in and I roughed out some of the basic plumbing back in 2016, but getting the fuel system done is essential to splash the boat ASAP. While working on the fuel gauge senders, I discovered that rat bastard thieves had siphoned 180 gallons of diesel from one of my tanks. May they rot in hell. Oh, and I discovered that Sunpro sells Made in China junk...I'm sticking with NOS American-made gauges from now on.

Anyway, over the next little while I'll be bending a lot of stainless tubing, getting the aft tank connected to the forward tank, building a valved manifold to control which tanks feed which engine, connecting the mains and genset to the system, and wrapping up the tank connections.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Fuel System

Cheers,
Q

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Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:07 pm
by roamer46
With the fuel gauge and senders working, I got to work on the fuel connections on the Cummins 6CTAs. They originally came with 1/2" 45° flare fittings on the supply side and 5/16" return lines. I swapped that out for 1/2" 37° AN fittings and 3/8 returns, and installed new Type A1 fuel hose as the flexible connection between the engines and the 1/2" and 3/8" stainless tubing I'll be using for supply and returns.

I realize that installing fuel hoses on the engines may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but this was a gas boat. It's never had diesel fuel lines. And once the fuel system is done, there's not a whole lot that needs to be done to get this boat floating.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: On-Engine Fuel Hoses

Cheers,
Q

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Re: Using a Shop Smith Mark V on a Chris Craft Roamer refit

Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:45 am
by roamer46
With the on-engine fuel connections and hoses done, next I assembled and installed the fuel supply distribution manifold. Under normal conditions, each engine will run on its respective tank (stbd-stbd, port-port, genset-fwd), but if I end up with bad fuel in a tank, the manifold will let me run the engines off of any of the three tanks on board.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fuel Supply Manifold

Cheers,
Q

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