The owner brought the boat to me after taking the boat apart, turning it over and removing the bottom planking. This is what it will look like when finished. The scantlings are minimal and the battens for the bottom are only pieces placed between the frames. They were intended to last 5 to 10 years. Chris Craft churned out a lot of boats post war and cut a lot of corners in their construction. This is the kind of thing I love, giving new life to an old boat. We recently took in a new restoration project. The screw on the other hand must be new and will run into the $300 to $400 range. Reusing as many as possible will save quite a bit of money. Since this boat has more than 160 bronze bolts in its frames and floors ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches all new bolts would run in the neighbor hood of $1200.00. They can be re threaded or cut and threaded for other areas needing shorter bolts. Just a few of the many bolts taken out and re threaded. The screws can’t be reused because they usually twist off when putting them in new wood, even when boring the proper size hole beforehand. At about $8.00 to $10.00 per 4 to 6 inch bolt I think they are worth reusing if possible. Many of them are fine to reuse on the new wood where they came from. Many of them are bent on the end but can be cut to be used in other areas. One of the things that we can use and repurpous are the bronze bolts we take out of the boat. While restoring the mahogany runabout in the previous post we are trying to reuse any material that is sound. If you have a boat that needs some work call and reserve your spot now. I have room for a boat or two for repainting or restoration over the winter. If you are interested in this Catspaw Dinghy its not to late to pick your own colors. While we are making good progress on this boat the work on the rowing sailing dinghy has been slow at best. Three streaks installed on the port bottom. This is much faster than hand planing each plank and very accurate. I use a small router with a jig I built to trim them to fit the keel as well as each plank to one another. Once the planks cool for a day or two we take them off and fit them. I can’t use clamps because of the plywood sub bottom so we clamp battens over them and use shims and wedges. You can see how I clamp them to the hull. Simply trying to bend them on the boat will usually spit them. We then steam the forward ends of the planks that take a severe twist from the bottom to the stem. I cut them a little big to allow for fitting. First we have to re-saw and plane all of the mahogany to the 3/8″ thickness of the planking.Īnn old plank sitting on a new piece of mahogany. I used the old planking as patterns to cut out blanks. We are currently getting out the mahogany bottom planking. If approached the right way, it can even be fun.Since my last post we have replaced almost all of the frames, chines, part of the keel and have installed the plywood sub bottom on this 18 foot Chris Craft utility runabout. Maybe more if extensive frame repair is required.īottom replanking is a very well covered topic, how to info is not hard to find. I have no idea what your woodworking abilities are, and if you are not confident in them, I wouldn't recommend trying, but if you can do it yourself the materials for a bottom on an 18 Riviera (wood, 5200, screws, paint) would run about $2000. Original bottoms are museum pieces, if you plan to use your boat, put a new bottom on it. It has been my experience that they are generally in worse shape than they look, the framing tends to stay wet and to rot, along with being perforated with screws to the point of splitting. I would not take my family too far offshore in a boat with a 57 year old bottom, I have had too many of them apart. Even with that type of care these bottoms weren't expected to last anywhere near the 50+ years that many of them have. John's comment about not leaking when new is correct, and in order to maintain that water tight bottom Chris Craft recommended removing the outer layer of planking and rebedding the canvas every other year.
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