1956 Collegian restoration

Moj'

This boat has a lot of solid backed rubrail trim on it.  It is  chrome plated bronze and was pretty beat up and all needed to be rechromed.  Problem is I couldn’t find anyone that could handle 12’ lengths.  My only option was to cut everything down to 6’ pieces and I just didn’t want to do that.  Plus my chrome guy wanted $100 per 6’ piece to rechrome, that would have been about 16 pieces which just sounded outrageous.

I ended up finding a supplier in Michigan that could get me polished stainless steel rubrail pre drilled and countersunk for less than half the cost of the rechrome.  Problem is I would have to learn how bend it around the bow and rear rubrails.  Once again YouTube came to my rescue and I gave it a shot today.

First i needed to make a buck in the radius of the rails out of wood.  I then lined it with 1/8” steel to protect the wood from the torch while heating the stainless.  Once it got red hot it actually formed around the buck fairly easily.  Then I rounded the ends and polished them and the bends to get the scorching out.   This was actually much easier than i thought it would be and the stainless looks very close to chrome so I’m very happy with it.

Test fitted everything and then put it aside ready to install when varnish is complete.it will all get a final run across the buffing wheel before install.

Used a torch with map gas, heat til cherry red where you want it to bend.  Once it’s red it will do whatever you want it to,just need to be patient and wait until it’s ready.  

No need to reheat after unless you’re trying to fix a kink, I had one that I used a brass mallet to fix but it went back into shape very nicely.  

Polisher is a harbor freight bench mount and green polishing bar.  The green bar is for hard metals like stainless.  To shape the ends i used a hand held grinder with an 80 grit flap disk then a metal file and finally 120 grit sandpaper on a random orbit sander.  From that right to the polisher.   It takes about 10 minutes from start to finish to round over and Polish an end.  

Supplier ishttp://marineind.net/    Problem is shipping cost which  was actually more than the cost of the trim.  They are only 5 hours from me so we did a road trip and picked it up.   They have a facility in TN as well as MI.  

Another plus for the stainless is if it gets scuffed or scrathed you can just pull it off the boat and buff it right back.  Win win.

Ps. Update,  I am wet sanding the final coat of varnish.    

Pss. I hate wet sanding