Finally, the light at the end of the tunnel is burning brightly! Today she emerged from the shop with only two hurdles in front of her before she reaches the preservation-complete finish line.
Today we tested her engine, gauges, oil pressure, charging circuit, as well as her new water pump and thermostat. This clip opens with John turning the key. She turns over briefly before her 1955 Chrysler Crown M-47 flathead six roars to life.
As with the bench test we taped some weeks ago, she idles and then responds to the throttle without so much as a hiccup. The Pertronix ifnition makes an impressive difference in how smoothly these old tractor engines run.
Having ;leapt this hurdle with ease, she faces her final test tomorrow (if the weather holds), when we launch her into Lake Champlain and challenge her under load.
I cannot tell you how satisfying it is for the crew to finally gaze on the fruits of months and months of hard work and painstaking attention to every detail when we debut a boat who has completed or nearly completed her preservation, as is the case with this 1955 20′ Lyman runabout today.
We have chronicled her progress from the dirty, tired-looking boat we pulled out of a one-story barn in Charlotte, VT a couple of years ago through today, her debut.
Now, we are not completely finished. As you will see in this clip, her brass stem trim, and her stainless transom trim and rub and splash rails must be installed. Installing the helm seat benches and the trim that closes the seam between the ceilings and floor panels await a few more coats of varnish. The rebuild kit for the water pump is “in transit.” And there is some minor touch-up here and there we will attend to soonest.
Our upholsterer is nearly finished fabricating the helm and aft seat bench and back, and the engine box lid cushions. She is matching the combination of a very light Lyman tan body with almost crimson trim.
The 2006 Venture trailer has surge brakes, and will soon have its custom-fabricated bow tower installed.
But she’s 99% ready for prime time, and especially for her sea trials, if ever the ice finally melts in Lake Champlain. At that moment she will be available for inspection and to ride her beautiful Venture trailer to her new port.
Wow! Is this an exciting day or what? We ran all sorts of tests and this 1955 Chrysler flathead six passed them all.
The Carter MO 1531 fuel pump diaphragm is working, but we sighted some seepage, so we will rebuild it. (It stopped leaking after we ran the engine for 10 minutes, but it so much easier to rebuild it with the engine sitting on its stand than later, when it is down in the bilge.)
The JABSCO 3590 water pump is, well, pumping, but a service kit is on its way to the shop. This engine has not run for a decade, so that impeller’s fins have almost surely stiff and permanently bent over.
She holds 50 pounds of oil pressure. The thermostat functions properly.
We installed a Pertronix ignition kit and six new plugs. Even though the oil in the sump came out clear and clean, we drained it, replaced the oil filter and filled it with 30 weight.
Now is the moment of truth! Will she fire? If/when she fires, will she run? Yes and yes. As you will see in the clip she starts well, idles absolutely smoothly and accelerates without any stumbling.
Once the rebuilds are complete and we have thoroughly cleaned the engine, into the bilge it will go.
Project completion is peeking over the horizon, as are the 20-24 inches and raging nor-easter forecast to arrive tomorrow morning.
We broke for lunch, after which it was time for RJ and me to mount the windshield back on this 1955 20′ Lyman runabout’s foredeck. First, however, we faced a critical test. Did our dado-routing procedure work?
With the two front panels in place, the gasket material cut to length, and holding our individual and collective breath more than a little, we began working around the frame, pushing the spade into its slot.
Everything went super smoothly, as this clip evidences. We can now safely say that, even absent the Sandusky plant’s tooling, the window-sealing dado can be routed into the frame.
We now have it in place and fastened down. As I type, RJ is behind me inserting a bead of mahogany-colored 3M 5200 into the seam formed where the outer edged of the frame meets the deck. After allowing it to cure, we will apply our own stain-varnish.
Installing the tank and its related plumbing, followed by the seats is next. It will not be too long before we have the engine in the bilge and be waiting for spring when she can emerge from the shop on her way to her sea trials on Lake Champlain
Our attention turns to a task on the 1955 20′ Lyman runabout that, in truth, has been hanging “heavy, heavy over our heads” for some time. The windshield glass on old style Lymans of which this one is an example was originally secured with extruded aluminum stops that are no longer available.
Since these stops were secured with small oval-headed brads, Lyman never cut dado channels in the rabbets. Indeed, this boat’s glass was secured with glazing points and some sort of window caulk that had been stained a “Lymanesque” brown when I purchased her.
Conversations with Tom Koroknay and members of the New England Lyman Group (NELG) all pointed to only one solution: rout the dado into the rabbet and secure the glass with standard, single-spade, white Lyman molding.
“All” we needed to do was rout the dado. The solution, we hoped, would be provided by a 3-fluke router bit slot cutter by CMT. We placed the bearing on the outer end of the shank, with the cutter inside it. Shim washers positioned the cutter precisely so that the glass fits behind the slot and the spade can be pushed into it.
Everything looked good on paper and also on the test piece we made, but that windshield frame, especially the top sections over the front sheets of glass, just looked so fragile. We hedged our bets by building a rough jig to which we could mount the frame using its mounting holes.
In the end, someone had to grab the router and go. John stepped up and masterfully guided the router around all four openings. We have now installed the two front sheets of glass and will install the whole thing on the boat before adding glass to the wings.
Phew! Fabricating an entire windshield would NOT have been fun.
Lyman built 147 20′ runabouts in 1955, and this boat, complete with her original Chrysler Crown 115 engine, is among the survivors.
According to Tom Korknay’s Legend of the Lakes, she is “(t)he last vestige of the heavily built, prewar boats, they featured narrow strakes, a deep freeboard, and 13/16 inch by 7/8 inch white oak ribs placed 5 inches on center. They were constructed of plywood hulls and decks with a sold mahogany transom like the 18-foot version.” (pp 95, 96)
She has been featured in earlier clips as the boat from whom we removed over 95 pounds of paint from the topsides.
Today, with preservation of her hull, inside and out, and from keel to gunwales complete, we moved her into our showroom for reassembly of her “furniture” and hardware, all of which has been preserved and plated by New England Chrome in East Hartford, CT.
We are at the most enjoyable point in each of our restoration projects. Every bit of stripping and deconstuction is behind us. The lapstrake topsides and boot stripe have received their final coat of Totalboat Wet Edge polyurethane paint.
We could not be more pleased with the new-to-the-markiet paint line from Jamestown Distributiors’. Wet Edge is positioned to challenge Interlux Brightside. We have tested it on half a dozen topsides by now, and will standardize on this paint, one which trumps Brightside by every criterion, but especially in terms of gloss and a curing process that leads to a virtual complete absence of brush marks. (We roll and tip this paint, and have applied three coats over three of the primer.)
The bottom was scraped completely clean, before 3M 5200 was applied to seal every seam. She then received three coats of Pettit Tie Coat Primer, followed by three of Sandusky Lyman Tan Antifouling paint.
We have four coats of Captain’s Varnish Ultra Clear 2067 on the transom and two on the decks and covering boards as I type. The ceilings are next.
Using Captain’s grows out of conversations with several well-respected Lyman owners whose judgement I respect. Since she is a SMB-owned boat, she’s become our test vessel for purposes of bright work.
If you search back through the clips we’ve posted to this challenge, you will see the same boat being stripped of what ended up being 95 pounds of paint from the topsides alone. She was just as “crusty” below the waterline, but collecting and weighing those “leavings” proved impossible.
Stay tuned for more updates. Once we have the ceilings installed, her completely rebuilt Chrysler Crown engine will be installed, followed by her floor panels, which have been updated with new Nautolex in natural.
We are racing against the onslaught of winter, and it looks like winter will win. The sea trials we hoped to run this fall will likely wait until the ice leaves Lake Champlain next spring.
She is a 1955, 20′ Lyman Runabout, Hull #1028 that we are told was at one time used as a commercial fishing boat off the coast of Maine. The intriguing aft steering mechanism supports that contention.
If you have ever seen a steering unit like that detailed in this video, please let me know! We have everything but whatever protruded through the floor and functioned as either a tiller or a steering wheel.
But she had been in Vermont for almost 20 years when we found her; at least 10 of which were spent sitting on a wood cradle crammed into a barn.
She is the Lyman introduced in an earlier clip that reported us having stripped over 85 pounds of paint from her topsides.
That was then. We are well into the deconstruction phase of her preservation, what with another 18 pounds of paint having been removed and virtually everything having been stripped from the hull’s interior.
We will offer periodic updates as the preservation project continues.
Maintaining and preserving antique and classic wood boats can be hyper-expensive. Doing it correctly improves performance and saves money and anguish over the long run.
Lapstrake boats are an excellent case in point. The topsides have a huge amount of surface area, which makes stripping and repainting them on the recommended five-year cycle both time-consuming and expensive.
I understand constraining cost wherever is possible without compromising the outcome. Painting topsides is not a candidate for doing it without proper preparation.
Yes, if the existing paint is in excellent condition, and if it was not applied on top of layer after layer of paint, sanding it flat, priming it and applying several coats of topside paint is fine.
This video offers an up close and personal view of what happens when correct procedures are sloughed aside in favor of “Just tossing on a couple more coats.”
As of April 19, I have removed 80 pounds of topside paint from the strakes. Yes, 80 pounds! And we are about 80% of the way to clean wood.
Please, please, please. Strip it long before there are 10+ layers of paint on the hull. Your performance, as in speed and acceleration, will improve. And, stripping the paint completely off every third round of repainting will expose emerging issues before they become serious, and before addressing them involves a major structural as well as cosmetic repair.
The air is electric as Brian prepares to cut an 18″ diameter hole in the Lyman Cruisette’s brand new seamed, planked teak foredeck. One mistake with the Festool router, the Drake will be severely wounded and disaster will rule the day.
