Restoring Chris-Craft Boats to their Original Beauty
Now I can get back to the sides. It takes about 10 to 15 days for the wood to dry out. So, it’s all about waiting and patience. Now I have the sideboards shaped into place and it’s time to start on the top band boards. Yes, there’s a lot of shaping it into the long radius. Just another surprise …
Here I’m building the wall between the second seat compartment and the engine compartment. When you’re building seats like this, you need to allow for the foam cushion and the upholstery material, so I space them with wooden shims. Yes, it does kind of look like a bridge, doesn’t it? I just love the look of that. Now it’s time …
Time to start on the interior. If you remember my earlier post when I received this boat, it just had a plywood interior. The original interior was nonexistent… There’s a lot of trial and error when doing it this way. All I have to go from are pictures which really don’t show a lot of detail of the interior. Basically, …
I’ve always been amazed at how the color really comes out when you steam the wood. After it’s dried about 10 days, I can start shaping the wood to fit. As I’ve said in the past, the planks expand anywhere from 3/8” to 1/2” due to being soaked and steamed. Although after the 10 days, most of the wood has …
Now that I have the board pre-cut using the old plank as a template, I soak it for 10 days in the bath water. I then steam it for an hour, put on insulated gloves to pull it out and strap it to the boat. Keep in mind, the reason I strap it to boat is because the pores are …