The bleaching milestone is about to disappear into our wake!
Starting very, very early this morning, John and I began bathing the 1946 U22’s entire exterior and interior surfaces with Daly’s Two-Part Wood Bleach. RJ joined us soon thereafter. (Daly’s is good, but nothing can match Clean Strip Two-Part Wood Bleach for bleaching mahogany! Unfortunately, Clean Strip is no longer available. Word is that it had to do with running afoul of hazmat shipping regulations.)
The key is keeping the wood wet for an extended period of time, and not applying one coat and calling it good. The wood must be kept wet, at least 8-12 hours in our experience, and this boat feels like it doubled in size as we raced around with our pails of bleach and 3-inch foam brushes. (We use foamies rather than chip brushes. Doing so helps guard against applying excessive liquid, especially to vertical surfaces, and thereby allowing rivulets of bleach run down and leave blonde streaks behind.
For the same reason, after applying a first coat to the decks, covering boards and cockpit components, we attach the topsides and transom from the waterline up. That way there is no chance that rivulets of bleach runs down and onto dry wood, which almost certainly will leave a blonde streak behind.
Because the first coat absorbs very quickly, we also apply bleach in tandem, working around the hull until all surfaces have been thoroughly wetted. Then the three of us work different areas, applying bleach until the surface glistens and stays that way.
That the U22 offers seemingly endless surface is evidenced by the fact that, as this clip closes we have applied 1.5 two-gallon kits.
We now leave her alone for several hours, before we will apply more bleach if the process seems to be losing momentum.
Simply put, there is nothing sexy or exciting about stripping paint and varnish, unless building shoulders and core muscles is your thing! Happily, save for below the waterline and the myriad components we must still strip, the nastiest part of this process is a major milestone that we are thoroughly enjoying fade into our wake.
But it is done! The 1957 23-ft. Lyman runabout’s topsides and transom are bereft of paint, varnish and stain.
We’ve also stripped most of the bottom paint off the first three or so strakes from the waterline down. At the behest of a SMB YouTube Channel subscriber, who swears by a product named Ultra Strip for stripping bottom paint. I bought a gallon for testing, and…
Hmmm, I agree, there are zero VOCs, and its jelly-like consistency hangs on the vertical surface. However….
We tried applying it with a stiff wallpaper brush and with a wide putty knife, and eventually had a thick layer on starboard. After leaving it to “cook” for four hours, per the directions, I tried scraping an area.
Even though there are only two coats of ablative bottom paint below the waterline, very little of it had been softened. We tested at six and eight hours, when, finally, the glop was ready for scraping. Perhaps the worst part of this experience was the maroon-colored glop that made a mess everywhere – Tyvek suits, scrapers, gloves and shoes. As always happens, some of the scrapings dropped outside of the cardboard sheets we laid out to protect the concrete.
Here we had to use a floor scraper, but have been left with stain blotches on the concrete. We applied two successive coats of Circa 1850 Heavy Body Paint and Varnish Remover to the same strakes on starboard, allowed it to “cook” for half an hour, scraped most of the paint down to bare wood, and escaped the maroon lakes we experienced on starboard.
Guess I won’t buy any more Ultra Strip!
She’s back on her trailer until the heating component of our pressure washing system arrives next week. Then we will clean her bilge and all interior framing before we bring her back into the shop for bracing and flipping.
The condition of her hull components continues impressing!
It has now been about one year since the 1946 Chris-Craft Brightside U22 arrived at the shop. Our initial Scope of Work involved installing a True 5200 bottom and cleaning up some cosmetic issues. Our goal was to have her back home in the Muskoka Lake Region of Ontario, Canada and ready for the 2017 boating season.
It was not to be. Once flipped, we had a dickens of a time getting the hull to sit squarely on a pair of boat dollies. Sadly, she was twisted. The project grew.
Then, having released two layers of bottom planking and the keel, that she had serious structural issues, starting with the chines and chine frames, and continuing through almost all of her bottom and transom framing. The project grew again, and, at this point we and her super-supportive owner family knew we were in for a major preservation project.
Now, one year later, her hull is true, she sports a True 5200 bottom and new chines. Most recently, John has focused on stripping the decks, covering boards, and everything finished bright in the cockpit. He released all of the white Sikaflex-like material in the deck seams and sharpened the seams’ edges using a variety of reefing hooks.
Every split, dent and ding in the topsides, transom, decks and covering boards has undergone John’s Dutchman-repair procedure. We saved every piece of original wood in the process. The entire surface has been sanded with 40, 60 and 80 grits using a Hutchins longboard sander. Since it is Friday, when the shop typically closes at noon, we very likely will hold off launching our bleaching process until Monday.
We’ll give the hull the better part of a week, maybe longer, to dry to our target 12-15 percent reading on our moisture meter.
Then we will stain, launching another milestone into our wake in the process. Two to three days later we will seal all surfaces with multiple coats of CPES, give it forty-eight hours to cure, and then the fun truly begins. Once the Sikaflex seams are filled and the material cures, which takes several days, we can commence with varnishing!
There is nothing like that first coat of varnish for transforming a dull, stained hull into the beginning of the mirror-like gloss we will deliver some twenty to twenty-five coats later.
A Christmas completion is not out of the question. Yes!
We are so close to bleaching the 1946 Chris-Craft brightside U22’s hull, decks, transom, etc.
However, as is all too often the case she wants a bit more of John’s attention. He inspected the fore and aft decks, the tow rails and the covering boards, only to identify scores of small dings, divots and scratches. Thank goodness for Jamestown Distributors’ Thixo Wood 2.0, to which John added a bit of stain and used to fill and will soon fair all these little repairs.
Of course, nobody would see many of these from 10 feet away, but having discovered them, I agreed with John that only by addressing every one of them, however small, could we deliver work that meets our standards for craftsmanship.
Then we discovered that the plank supporting the center plank of the aft deck had been chewed away beneath the gas bung and stern pole ports. Amidst lots of muttering as he was showered by router shavings as he lay on his back carving out a channel for the supporting patches he fashioned and glued into place.
The two small Dutchman repairs to the plank completed the process, and John next reached for his trusty Hustler longboard pneumatic sander.
We are so close to being able to shout, “There! The topside paint and transom varnish are gone!”
Yes, so close, but also just not quite there. We’ve completely stripped the starboard topsides and the transom, but the port topsides have dug in and are battling against our Circa 1850 Heavy Body Paint and Varnish Remover and our Sandvik scrapers.
RJ and I leave each day with ever-stronger, but always tired shoulders and lower backs. But we are about halfway through to watching the exterior stripping challenge fade into our wake … at least the one above the waterline.
Some years back we preserved a 1955 20’ Lyman runabout, for which I kept “score” as I stripped the topsides. When I hit 93 lbs., all I could say was, “This is silly!”
Well, since I’d collected all of the scrapings from starboard into two big garbage bags, why not? They weighed close to 50 pounds in total. Stripping the 8 or so layers of paint has not been our biggest challenge here. Somewhere around layer 4 or 5, someone decided to apply some sort of battleship gray fairing compound to almost the entire topsides.
Yes, on both port and starboard. This stuff is like concrete and takes four applications of the stripper to begin softening.
On the happy news front, what a fantastic hull! She’s 60 years old and there is nary the tiniest spot of rot anywhere, strakes and transom planks included. Moreover we have yet to come upon a clench nail that is other than as tight as the day it was pounded home in Sandusky, OH.
It’s a real honor to be trusted with preserving such an original boat that is in such good shape. I know we will find issues as we keep working, but at least the hull’s major components are straight, true and strong.
This 1957, 23-foot, narrow-strake Lyman Inboard Runabout never strayed from Ohio until I brought her to Vermont some weeks ago. Once we finish her complete preservation, she will split time between upstate New York, where her new owners have a summer home, and Austin, Texas.
Peter Henkel, Peter Henkel Inc., will rebuild her 125 HP Chrysler Crown engine. Indeed he’s already torn it down and reports that is both solid and clean. He will completely rebuild the long block and everything bolted to it, and have it sitting in my shop early next spring.
Other than the pretty standard weakness and splitting in the stem-gripe-knee area, her hull is as solid and unhurt as any Lyman we’ve worked with to date.
Being of pre-1960 vintage, she has a mahogany planked transom, which is in perfect condition. (We usually see some deterioration around the exhaust port, but even this wood is absolutely solid.)
According to Tom Koroknay, Lyman Boats, Legend of the Lakes, Lyman built 893 23-foot Inboard Runabouts from 1957 through 1960.
The 23-foot Inboard Runabout was one of the best rough-water boats that Lyman ever made… All of these inboard models were basically earlier versions that were stretched and widened until the desired length was achieved. Thanks to this trial-and-error method, the 23-foot hull was nearly the perfect combination of beam and length and featured the traditional Lyman soft entry, rounded chine, and slight dead rise in the stern….Standard inboard construction was used for this model.. but the ribs were increased to 1-1/8-inch width with the standard 13/16-inch thickness, and placed on 6-inch centers. These hulls could take a good beating. One of the most dependable workboats ever conceived, this model was used for everything from charter boats to water taxis to service boats for the Ohio Division of Natural Resources laboratory on South Bass Island in Lake Erie.
p. 98 – Tom Koroknay, Lyman Boats, Legend of the Lakes
Our 23-foot has survived her first 60 years remarkably well. Nary a rib shows any sign of age let alone any rot. The softness we typically site in the aft corners of the bilge is nowhere to be seen here. Her gunwale and deck framing are, for the most part true and sound. (Someone did crank the forward lifting ring down about 3/4-inch too far, so we have addressing a hollow in her foredeck in our future.
While she is structurally sound above the waterline, someone has released the covering boards and then installed them anew without any sort of adhesive and using far too few fasteners. Those we can find appear to be common finish nails or bards. We must release and reinstall both of them.
That said, this situation is actually a blessing in disguise. With the covering boards released, we will be able to clean and seal the gunwale frames and undersides of the covering boards with copious amounts of Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer (CPES). Then we will install them one more time, but now bedded an appropriate adhesive.
Finally and sadly, someone chose to replace the port foredeck panel with other than ribbon cut mahogany veneer plywood. The result is, well, just awful. We will replace the foredeck completely, using proper ribbon cut ply for sure. Doing so affords us access to the foredeck framing, both for purposes of addressing the hollow referenced above, and also for sealing the framing with CPES. She has lots of paint on her topsides, which can sometimes hide a host of issues, both major and minor. We will know more on this score once we have cleaned and applied Sandusky Paint Company Lyman sand tan bilge paint to her bilge.
The bottom, and especially the garboards appear sound, at least as far as we can tell lying on our backs. We will know much more once we have braced the cockpit area and rolled her over. First we will scrub and scrape the bilge clean – way too much fun for sure!
Another milestone, well, almost fading in our wake. John has a bit of Sikaflex to release from foredeck seams before he can insert a few Dutchman repairs on the decks and covering boards and then sand all of these surfaces one last time.
Then it’s bleaching time with staining and sealing with CPES to follow.
It won’t be long before we are filling seams with Sikaflex and varnishing.
I just checked. Our first video, the 1946 Chris-Craft brightside U22, arriving from Canada, is dated May 23, 2016. We flipped her about a month later, which tells me we’ve had her upside down for over a year!
That fact makes today’s milestone particularly sweet for us, and even more for her owner! As you can see in the clip, we use a winch and length of soft line that wraps around the hull and is secured to a bilge stringer, to control the rate at which she turns. She represents a huge mass, one that will have lots of momentum should it begin rolling uncontrollably.
To our surprise, however, she behaved herself while RJ and I rolled her almost effortlessly.
The real challenge is keeping her upright and stable once she has flipped. Her widest and heaviest components are now above the straps, and they really, really want to roll through 90 degrees.
Didn’t happen though, and she’s now happily resting on a pair of boat dollies as we begin stripping “everything else” at and above the gunwales.
An odd silence engulfed the shop once we had her resting on her dollies and back in her work station. For the first time in over a year, we, and especially John, were viewing down into her bilge from above, rather than up into it while lying on our backs beneath her. John finally exclaimed, “I can see the results of all my framing work right side up for the first time!”
While we’ve had some comments that all that bracing was at best overkill and probably not necessary, remember that the hull arrived with a huge hog and what I call corkscrewed. We took no chances once we had the hull true again.
That bracing ensured that she would not get twisted again. So now comes the Circa 1859 Heavy Bodied Paint and Varnish Remove, Sandvik scrapers, stainless steel scrubbing sponges, and reefing hooks with which we will remove all remaining varnish on the decks, covering boards, dash, etc., and what we suppose is Sikaflex from the deck seams. Varnish cannot be that far away …. Can it?
Thank you for the many requests for a video-taped Dutchman “clinic” that follows John through the process of fabricating and executing Dutchman topside repairs.
As several earlier ’46 Brightside U22 videos have illuminated, John begins by inspecting every square inch of the topsides, marking any spot or area requiring cosmetic attention/repairs with blue painter’s tape.
The Dutchman begins with cutting the channel or slot in a plank using a plunge router, or what is the female component of the Dutchman. A key to achieving an invisible Dutchman is that the slot run with the grain to the maximum extent possible.
After cleaning and carefully defining the slot’s edges and shape using hand chisels and selecting a piece of old mahogany having color and grain properties similar to the plank being repaired, John fabricates the plug, sanding on it until it fits perfectly.
It is subsequently glued in place using Jamestown Distributors’ TotalBoat Thixo Wood 2.0 to which a bit of the stain we will use on the hull has been added.
As we detailed in the last video, stirring stick “stitches” that will hole the plug in place, are secured by wood screws passing into countersinks from which those securing the plank have been removed.
Twenty-four or so hours later, the Thixo Wood 2.0 has cured, the “stitches” are removed and John fairs the plug to the plank with a wood chisel. He leaves the blue painter’s tape in place as a depth guide for his chisel.
Finally the tape is removed, screws are driven home into the countersinks, bungs are inserted and glued in place using Thixo Wood 2.0, and the area is ready for sanding.
We hope to have the topsides and transom sanded, and the hull flipped upright sometime next week.
