1955 CC Hurricane Restoration

Well?   Have you covered her up for the summer? Or are you running three shifts making T-Shirts?
Hey To Dana!
bj

hasbeenskier wrote: Well?   Have you covered her up for the summer? Or are you running three shifts making T-Shirts? Hey To Dana! bj

Well she's not covered up but we're not running 3 shifts either. I took a much needed break and then work did come on pretty strong so I haven't touched it since my last update. Also been insanely busy around the house and yard this spring but I think I'm almost in the clear on that!

I did position and test install the strut yesterday and I also made a test stand for the engine. I started getting the Hemi ready to fire up and am having fun learning about it. I've read the manual on that engine twice from cover to cover, it really is quite a piece of marine engineering history.

I've also decided to get some bottom paint on the hull and flip it back over so that will be done as soon as I can find a couple of weekends. After looking at the progress made over the winter I felt prety good but I then made a checklist of what needs to happen next and man there's a lot of work left to do.

Anyway, thanks for checking up on me BJ/John.

Last week I set the strut position and Saturday with the use of a borrowed tool from Pete B I got the shaft hole drilled. It lined up within an 1/8" of the existing hole in the inner keel so I was pretty happy with that. I have been dreading this process but Pete's rig made it a pretty easy job.

All the running gear fits up good with the exception of the 14" props that came with the boat. The boat had major prop rash and a homemade rash guard on it before I pulled it apart. The 14" props explain that as there is only about an 1/4" of clearance. Luckily I have a good assortment of 13" props around.

Alan, that boat is an absolute work of art! That Hemi is a beast.
Looking forward to the day that I can meet you and see that boat in person.
Nice Memorial Day picture, thanks!

Very inspirational.....i'm going to have a few beers and sit with my Chris Craft tonight

as always, I am impressed.

jbear wrote: But I too miss my Sunday night "fix". john

Finally.....an update and pictures. I gotta agree that it is a cryin' shame to put paint on that bottom. Love the last pic.
Hi to Dana too.

john

Wow.

Cool shot of outside the garage too. Motorhome and '81 in view.

Bet there would be no bugs in Dec/Jan!

Did you forget to e-mail me something or did I somehow miss it?

john

storm34 wrote: Alan, any updates on the 55?

Season 2 kicks off first weekend of November, Lumber for the sides is ordered. This year's scope of work should be a piece of cake compared to last winter although I think progress hanging the sides will be painstakingly slow!

Bottom needs one more coat of paint, then I'll install the topside inner layer of plywood, flip it and start hanging some planks. Stay tuned!

I was waiting for this thread to move back to the top. I will be looking forward to the updates. You are doing an outstanding job with this.

Season 2 kicked off last week, the bottom got a wet sanding and another coat of paint. It will get a final sanding and finish coat once the sides are on the boat to tie it all together. Also got a coat of bilge paint on most of the interior parts that will be tough to get at once the sides are on.

Yesterday I started fitting the first layer of 1/4" marine plywood to the topsides. Got about half way on one side and then spent the rest of the day steam bending the auxilary frames up in the bow area. This is going along pretty good so hopefully I can get 2 days next weekend and make a dent in it. Once everything is dry fitted it needs to be marked, disassembled, cpes'd and then permanently installed with 5200.

Nice miter saw/stand.

BuffaloBFN wrote: Quick as you bend a straight line; it isn't so straight anymore.    Nice fitting sir!

Took me a minute to catch on to that Greg but yes as you bend the 8" wide sections tight to the frames your nice straight edge no longer butts to the previous board. Every strip there has to be fitted with the block plane. I've mentioned it somewhere back a few pages but the Meranti hydrotek marine plywood is a real bugger to work with, hard as a rock and the splinters are rediculous. I honed my block plane 3 times in one day to keep an edge on it. I'll be glad when I get back to solid planks of real wood again.

The plywood is tough, you're asking that block plane to do the end grain and edge grain at the same time.

This weekend started with a step backwards(again). Basically I wasn't happy with the way the plywood inner sides were laying out. The problem is the plywood is so stiff that although I could form it to follow the contour of the side frames it wanted to bow out over the 18" span between frames. Even though I steam bent the auxilary frames the rigid plywood overpowered them and tended to straighten. An eyeball down the side of the boat showed the plywood was scalloped and not going to work.

My solution was to remove everything and steam bend the plywood strips, then overbend the plywood auxilary frames and reinstall. So 7 hours into my day I was back to where I started but with much better results and finally happy enough to move ahead.

The steam bending is slow but was definately the right way to approach this, after just a few more hours I was able to finish up one side. It will need to be removed again for Cpes and then permanently installed with 5200, I should be able to do that with the lights out by now. It'll still need a minor amount of fairing before the planking goes on but I'm pretty happy with it now.

The plywood was bent on the hull where I had clamping, some was done on my high tech bending fixture.


Pretty simple really.


Bending my way to the bow.


When buying my plywood I purchased one sheet of Okume marine as I'd heard it was easier to bend, problem being it costs 3 times the Meranti....Bottom line is it's worth it. I saved this sheet for the bow areas and had I known it would bend so much easier I might have been tempted to return all the Meranti and use Okume on the entire boat. Trying to be frugal with this project and watching the budget but this is one area that I will not skimp on next time.

One side down one to go.