Category: Chris Craft

As promised two videos above, here are both an up-close view of the finished product following installing the first sheet of Aquatek Marine plywood, and the resulting issue with the bottom transom plank being too tall.

You cannot be too detail oriented in cleaning the excess 5200 from everywhere, and this includes sending RJ under the boat to confirm we have no ribbons of squeeze-out hanging from the frames in the bilge.

As is clear in the clip, before we removed the hog, the center of the bottom transom plank was at a good ¾” taller than it will be once we trim it flush with the plywood. The bottom planking will pass over this plank and terminate flush with the transom’s exterior surface.

The excess height shrinks to less than ¼” at the chines, which tells us that our “friend” jacked the center of the transom up, well, down once she is upright, which was the major contributing factor in the genesis of the hog.

My goodness………..

Launching the True 5200 Bottom assembly is upon us … finally!

But first John and I must address a major issue we discovered when we began re-installing the bottom two transom planks, a discovery that also informed the “why/how” of the hog the hull was suffering when she arrived.

I will follow up with more detail once we have installed the first sheet of Aquatek Marine plywood on the bottom – two videos hence, but here is the gist of the discovery. When we tried to set it in place, post-reframing and re-shaping the transom to remove the hog, John exclaimed, “Oh my God! This plank is almost ¾” too tall in the center, and about ¼” tall at the chines!”

Yep! Old Mr. Butt Joint was here as well. Remember all the open joints we found in the transom framing before we rebuilt it? Well, Mr. Butt Joint was also Mr. Sloppy Joint, and the transom grew in height by almost ¾” in the process. (I now understand why the chine he installed was so ill-fitting. He had to goof around with it so that it fit between the bottom chine plank and the bottom planking.)

We will address the situation, and trim this plank, but not until the inner plywood bottom layer is fastened. Then we can scribe a line and trim the bottom transom plank accurately using our Fein Multimaster tool.

The happy news is that John and RJ finished fabricating, sealing and coating the components of the True 5200 Bottom’s inner plywood skin with Sandusky Chris-Craft Bilge Paint while I was tracing endless woodies in Tavares, FL.

We are ready to begin fastening the plywood. The finished True 5200 Bottom cannot be far behind!

Finally! She, and her previous “restorers” fought us every inch of the way. Perhaps most distressing is that, rather than neglect and just use her, this 1946 Chris-Craft Brightside U22 owners consigned her to shops for periodic maintenance.

Sadly we now know that she returned worse for wear because these folks took every shortcut and made every mistake possible. Bottom line, they worked to embarrassing low standards. Rather that repair, these incompetent souls created water traps, used softwood where white oak belongs, drove in stainless fasteners below the waterline, and on and on.

Sistering bottom frames resulted from being too lazy to simply release the keel, so that broken and rotted frames could be removed and replaced in whole, not piecemeal. Undoing all of the sloppy, ill-informed and just plain destructive results has been our prime challenge as we worked to essentially rebuild the transom and bottom framing, virtually from scratch.

Example: we replaced her rotted and split gripe because of the water traps these guys created, an issue that was compounded by not taking the time to replace broken carriage bolt fasteners. However, all of that is behind us as of today. We removed the corkscrew twist in the hull, the severe hogging caused by improper frame work, replaced at least two-thirds of the frames and cross ties, junked the replacement (softwood!) steering box mount with rugged white oak, replaced the gripe and much, much more.

Every square inch of every surface below the waterline received three coats of Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer (CPES) and two initial coats of Sandusky Chris-Craft Mahogany Bilge Paint. With proper maintenance over time, none of these members should ever soak up water again.

Now the hull is absolutely solid and ready for her True 5200 bottom. First, we will give the many tubes – at least 30 – of 3M5200 time to cure before we begin stressing it as we will when the inner sheets of plywood and outer planking are applied.

The sense of relief in the shop was like venting a huge boil as John tightened the final hex nut on the steering box mount.

Now the fun begins as she will look more and more like the graceful woody she is as we begin the construction (rather than deconstruction and replacement) phase of saving this wonderful and venerable Chris-Craft, who will grace Ahmic Lake in Ontario, Canada once again starting next summer!

We so hoped we would have passed the bottom framing milestone by the New Year, but she just keeps fighting us.

We discovered one more broken frame/cross-tie unit – that lying directly beneath the stuffing box – during what we fully expected would be our final integrity check.

And, what we hoped would be a minor repair to the steering box mounting system morphed into a complete removal and fabricating anew when I grabbed it during the inspection, only to pull a handful of completely rotted softwood, yes, softwood, out of what appeared to be a sound block.

This block is not original, as is evident from inspecting the forward section of the starboard bilge stringer and finding empty carriage bolt holes. But now we have fabricated, sealed and bilge painted a new mounting system using FAS grade, fully 2+ inch thick white oak that is more than equal to the task at hand.

John has finished fabricating the new cross tie, and plans to finish the frame sometime this weekend. Once it is sealed, painted and in place, we can install the keel, which will be bedded in 3M5200, and that milestone will begin fading in our wake.

Next comes installing the two chine planks temporarily as guides to sending the outer edges of the new chine frames to the proper bevel, and also sanding the bottom faces of the – now seven – new frames into the proper profile.

Finally, finally, then we can begin making patterns for the 1/8 inch thick Aquatek plywood, slathering the frames with 3M5200 – at least 1/8 inch thick, and fastening it down with thousands of silicon bronze screws.

Onward….

Yes, another update on the Brightside Chris-Craft U22’s bottom framing.

The bottom is framed with a combination of main and intermediate members. The main frames land on the main topside frames and are fastened with a plywood gusset in addition to the #10 x 3” wood screw through the chine frame.

These frames are spaced 28.5” on center, save for the final three, which are spaced 26.5”, 25.5” and 25” on center.

The intermediate frames a screwed to the chine frame and joined beneath the keel with a cross tie plank that is screwed through and into the face of each frame member.

John announced yesterday that all new frames were installed and positioned so that the keel just lands on every pair from bow to stern, “But we seem to have a problem. There are no intermediate frames in the three bays lying beneath and aft of the engine and transmission.”

Sure enough, as you see in the clip, these three bays, bays which must withstand the torque of the engine and slamming against the water at speed, are bereft of intermediate frames.

Inspecting the replaced chine framing indicated that Chris-Craft simply omitted these frame members from the design, a contention that was confirmed when RJ inspected the whit-side 1946 U22 we have in storage.

We contacted the owner, who agreed with our contention that fabricating and installing three pair of intermediate frames beneath and aft of the engine/transmission only makes good sense. So we will.

Doing so will significantly increase the stiffness and strength of the bottom and the hull, which should translate into more of the engine’s torque powering the prop, rather than tweaking the hull.

Yes, we will repeat this process with the white-side U22 when we get to her preservation.