Restoration of Moonshine Baby H-54

Part 1

The Junior Gold Cup, 7 Litre (H) class inboard hydroplane is a 1960 Ted Jones design that competed from 1961-76.
The hydro was built originally by Jim Moore & Dallas Kremer of Bellevue, Kentucky.
Above photo depicts the day I brought it home from a storage facility in St. Cloud, MN in March of 1996. It had been in storage for about 8 years. The trailer appeared somewhat road worthy and my hope was that it could make the 1 hour trip to my home. I checked the bearings and then took the tires to a truck repair outfit down the road. $10's later I had a couple of used tires mounted on the rims and went back to the storage building. The 2x6 wood framing for which the hydroplane was supported on was dry rotted through completely in spots. I was jumping on the inside of the hydro to determine if the wood framing could potentially bust apart on the trip home. Luckily they did not. I proceeded to load up the hardware that came with the hydroplane. The boat was given to me by Tad & Lisa Colwell and they purchased it in 1988. At that time Tad had removed a incorrectly sized, blown up, Chevy small block motor that somebody had fitted into the hull. All the hardware had been removed from the hull and were put in boxes. The parts that came with the hull included the motor mounts, rudder & quadrant, propeller & propeller shaft, strut, skid fin, steering gearbox & linkages, Hallcraft gearbox & the gearbox mount, seat, battery tray, gas tank, and various aluminum parts. If only it had the original 2 - 427 Ford race motors, 6 Stromberg carbs, zoomies and all the other goodies that Richie Dittrich had with the boat when he sold it in to someone in the Minneapolis area around 1984.

Spring broke and I was ready to tackle this project. The first thing I did was to gently "shove" the hydroplane off the trailer to make it easier to remove the deck plywood. Now I had a interior view of the entire inside of the hull and sponsons. After surveying the frames, battens, beams, etc., it became apparent that just cleaning up the inside and repairing a few broken boards would be nearly impossible. Oil from a blown motor coated almost everything. On top of this the oil had penetrated under the varnish and wicked into the wood framing and severely softened the lumber. The only way I could do the quality of restoration I was intent on doing would be to start with new lumber for the framing. The original hull therefore would become a pattern for it's own rebuild. I was able to rescue some of the original lumber to be used into the new hull for sentimental reasons.

The sponsons after unbolting and busting them loose from the hull. Note the aluminum plates that were attached to the runner surface of the sponsons.
There was multiple layers of plywood which made up the different levels of the runners and sponsons chines.
The sponsons that were incorporated into the design of this hydroplane are the wet type sponsons.
They are designed to fill up with water when the hydro is placed in the water, and then the water would flow out of the sponsons after the hydro
reaches planing speed. Surprising there was little signs of dry rot.

With the sponsons off the hull, all remaining plywood is removed from the framing. This reveals the skeleton of the hull.
I first unscrewed all the battens and deck beams. After they were out of the way I unbolted each of the 12 frames that slide up along the 2 main motor stringers. I started with the transom and removed and marked each frame. When they are all removed you end up with a pile of lumber.

After I disassembled the old frames I was able to use them as patterns for making the new frames. The new frames were made using 7-ply, 1/2" thick Birch plywood that was bolted and screwed to 13/16" thick Sitka Spruce lumber. This will replace the original 3-ply, 1/4" thick Douglas Fir plywood. This will increase strength and not add much weight.

I purchased 2 Sitka Spruce boards 19' long x 10" wide for the motor stringers. The original ones were 2 smaller pieces scarfed together to get the required 19' length. After jig sawing and fairing the motor stringers to shape the 12 frames and transom are bolted to the 2 motor stringers. The battens are epoxyed and screwed to the frames and then the bottom plywood is attached to the battens. The new plywood bottom is made up of 7-ply, 3/8" thick Okume plywood. The original hydro was 'skinned' in 3-ply, 1/4" Mahogany plywood. I scarfed 3 pieces of plywood together to get the 19' length needed for the bottom and sides. Six inch wide pieces were added along both sides of the 48" wide bottom to cover the width needed. The plywood "skin" is epoxyed and fastened to battens with silicon bronze wood screws. Mahogany wood plugs (versus fiberglass filler that was originally used) goes into all the screw holes and sanded flush.

The sides and non trips plywood pieces are being epoxyed and screwed to the hull's frames. I scarfed 3 pieces of 3/8" thick plywood together to get the 19' long sides. Wood plugs are glued in and flush sanded. While applying the epoxy coating on the outside I embedded fiberglass cloth into the epoxy coating. This will give the sides of the hull better abrasion resistance and a little more strength. After completion of the other side the hull is ready to have the sponsons attached.

I uprighted the hull to epoxy and bolt the sponson frames to the hull. I temporally attached the fore deck skins to give me a shape to follow for fairing in on the sponsons. With that completed I flipped the hull back upside down (photo above) and screwed down the battens. This photo was taken just before I started fairing all the boards in preparation of laying down two layers of plywood for the sponsons runners and chines.