Restoration Part II

Part 2

This photo was taken of the bottom after completion.
I dry fitted all the aluminum parts that needed to go on the bottom of the hull. After removal, I finished the bottom. Next was sanding & polishing of all aluminum plates & parts. Attachment is by gluing & screwing.
The strut and 2-blade propeller are steel and those were re-plated. A log shaft was fabricated by Henry Lauterbach. This replaces the old stuffing box and mid strut. The skid fin, 2 sponson runner plates & shaft bearing mount are original. I fabricated a new sheet of aluminum for the aft section of the hull. The old one was badly pitted.
I was curious as to why there was so much 'battle armor' attached to the bottom. It was more than any other hydroplane I've seen from that era. Original builder/owner/driver Dallas Kremer told me the boat raced so much on the Ohio River and typically there was lots of 'junk' floating in the water. The plates were put on to the bottom to keep the plywood protected from penetration.

I flipped the hull over and placed it on a temporary dolly to finish the restoration.
I notched out the frames for battens and epoxy & screwed them to the frames.
This is followed by fairing of all the deck beams for final overall shaping of the decking.
After I was happy with the final dry fitting, everything was removed.
I masked off the sides & bottom from overspray and sprayed about 2 gallons of polyurethane to the interior of the hull & sponsons.

Areas not seen, I did not spend much time cleaning up the squeezed out epoxy. Since everything was sanded prior to assembly, that maded for a good base to apply a few coats of thinned out sealer first, followed up by a few full strength coats. The coatings of polyurethane applied to everything else should seal any exposed areas of wood just fine. One of the nice benefits about working from scratch with new wood.

The 3/16" thick Okume plywood deck 'skins' are fitted, epoxy & screwed down to the framing. All screw holes are filled with wood plugs and waiting to be cut off & sanded flush.
The sponson decks could not bend to the top shape of the hull so I soaked them with hot water. Within a few minutes the panels were flexible enough take the shape.
The whole top was glued & screwed with 2 sponson deck panels, a center panel and one aft panel. I scarfed plywood to get the panel lengths & widths required.
I made a 1/8" wide groove cut with my router & Mahogany inlay was glued in all deck joints to give it a bordered & finished look.

The finish was hand wiped with a penetrating stain, followed by airbrushing different shades of dye stains. It was my attempt to get some depth & warmth into the typically bland Okume rotary-cut face veneer. I shaded the edges & corners. I wanted to have the entire deck appear like one large sheet of plywood. Eight coats of varnish were applied with a foam brush over epoxy. Block sand and then the 9th coat was diluted & sprayed. After a few days, I cut open the varnish coating with sandpaper and let it cure for a month. Wet sanding proceeded to the final 2000 grit size. The buffer was used to bring up the final gloss. If you're interested, here's a technical article I wrote on the finishing of this hydroplane..