68 Chris Craft

It's been done before,but a tower would be nice

I'm doing my best to stay close to original but Im a hot rodder from birth, I never met anything i could not improve on. So far ive resisted the urge to up the Hp on the old 283, its all rebuilt and all i did was put on a nice set of corvette aluminum valve covers from the era. The vinyl is tempting, i would be nearly done if everything just got covered over now.

Sean,
From the pictures, it looks like you're doing some heavy thinking and looking at reference books. Deciding on what you want to do with the deck?

Sean, backing up several months, what did you use for bleach on the top sides and what was the process? I'm going to end up with similar color variations on my Hurricane so I plan to bleach the entire boat but have never done it.

Wood kote lite N up was the bleach

Pete, I am running out of gray paint for the inside, Jack sent me up some unmarked stuff. do you know of Anything i might be able to pick up locally to finish the inside with?

Tanks for the bleach info guys. I think some testing is in order soon.

Paint finally came in, one more coat tonight and we will start laying in the decks. Found a good picture of a 68 grand prix to copy the board pattern. Should go a lot faster than the bottom did.

Should have the rest on tomorrow if things go as planned

Hopefully we will start staining and varnishing this thing next week! The sanding and plugging is about finished.

Looks real nice Sean.
Do you hand sand after the machine sanding?

75 stang wrote: between layers of clear on the sides. I should probably have started with a bookshelf or something to learn the proper ways but its not my nature.

Sean,
"Clear" on the sides? What did you use? I hope it's not what I think it is!!

The deck is looking good!

Sean,
I'm glad to hear that you are in fact using a spar varnish and not a automotive "clear" coat. The automotive clears look great (with the exception of not adding the amber tone like a spar) but I've never seen one hold one for more than a couple months on a wood boat. My understanding is they are not flexable enough to handle the seasonal moisture growth/shrinkage. They also do mot offer any UV protection.

The seams are done with 5200 before the last or second to last coat of varnish. Paint is optional but most will paint. The fake seams can be paint only if the grove depth matches the real seams. If your seams are clean with crisp edges. I just slop the paint in and hard block wet sand accross the top removing the unwanted paint. Then the last coat of varnish. Masking takes time and is a real PITA.

I like the paint idea! I cant paint a straight line to save my butt! I put the board seams together with 5200 to give them more strength if soemone steps on them but i really did not want to do the seams with 5200 because its so hard to clean up or sand down high spots. I have a free weekend for a change, hopefully we can get a lot done if it all comes together.

Chrome replate or is new available reasonably?

It finally looks a little more like a finished boat. I need to cpes over the stain tomorrow and then start laying on the varnish and hopefully the white stripes over the weekend.

The last picture is the floor covering. Have you seen anything simular still available?