Old boat project

[Ian F]

Just looked up the Pax 20. Looks fast! And skinny, not for wideasses, lol.

Yep. Narrow and fast. Didn't feel as tippy as one might expect for such a narrow boat. Probably due to the hard chine design.

Along that line of thought, we took my friend's LT to the lake at French Creek and spent an hour or so trying to learn how to roll it. It did not go well. That boat has so much primary and secondary stability it simply does NOT want to flip over. We did get a lot of practice with water entry.

 

[one piece crank]

So I bought this semi restored late 50s vintage boat 5 years ago. Not sure what I was thinking except that it's wood and it looked cool. $5k for boat, motor and trailer.
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14' Elgin with 35HP Elgin motor. Basically it's a Sears boat. Sears bought the Elgin brand at some point. Bought it from a guy who did a decent, if not museum quality, restoration. Deck and hull are plywood, white stripes are tape, lol. Gives it that vintage ChrisCraft look. It ran OK when it wanted to start, but was super finicky and left a trail of oil on the lake. I used it for 2 seasons and it wouldn't start, so I didn't launch it for a year or 2. Last year, decided to repower it with a modern motor, so I ordered up a brand new 25HP Suzuki motor off the internet. Clamped it on, ordered a new steering system from Vevor for like $150 (The old motor used cable and pulley steering. Primitive.) So much nicer to operate - quiet, reliable and powerful enough for putzing around on my lake.

I never got around to making the electrical components work with the new motor. The old one was positive ground, for one. Didn't really need lights, horn, etc. Decided I would fix that. More fun than I expected. In addition to lights and horn, it had gauges, under dash lighting, etc. Had a water pressure powered speedometer that never worked. Purchased a modern fuse block, some spools of wire and various crimp-on connectors and got to work. Main wires from battery had a short, so I ripped them put and replaced them, got a nice GPS speedometer that fit the existing hole (uses a mechanical needle, so looks kinda vintage). Kept the existing voltmeter. Had like 5 or 6 toggle switches on the dash, but decided I only need 2, so I fabricated a wood panel to cover up the old holes. Ended up replacing ALL of the wiring in the interest of a clean setup.

Also found a period-correct Elgin steering wheel on eBay. Was in decent shape, but I decided to refinish it in red using leftover touch-up paint from my truck. The floor of the boat had 1/4" plywood panels that were deteriorating, so I decided to replace them, too. Finding marine grade 1/4" mahogany plywood was difficult, so I decided to use solid Sapele. Had to mill it down to 1/4" thickness so it would conform to the shape of the hull. Lotsa compound miter cuts involved. New bottom paint and some varnish touch-up and called it done:

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Yes, beautiful project!

 

[SmooveP]

Yep. Narrow and fast. Didn't feel as tippy as one might expect for such a narrow boat. Probably due to the hard chine design.

Along that line of thought, we took my friend's LT to the lake at French Creek and spent an hour or so trying to learn how to roll it. It did not go well. That boat has so much primary and secondary stability it simply does NOT want to flip over. We did get a lot of practice with water entry.

I never learned to roll. Took a rolling class years ago in a pool with Monmouth County Park system. There were a dozen people in the class and only one guy was able to do it by the end of the class. We used their little squirt boats. I blame the teacher.