1981 16' Starcraft Seafarer Restore (PIC Heavy)

Before








After




The orange keel roller (cockeyed) is just a temporary piece to help me get the boat on and off trailer when working on it without allowing the bow to hit the trailer frame due to "deep V" shape of the bow.

 

In progress pics? I enjoy bringing things back from what others would consider "beyond repair".
Finished product looks awesome.

 

Thanks I have a bunch of in progress pics too. They're just on my phone and it will take me awhile to upload them so I'll try to update this thread tonight and answer any questions folks may have. I'll try to also provide a high level summary of some of the steps I took and materials used.

 

Leak testing. Fill with water look for drips. Only place I saw was on the bow. Very slow minor leak. I will then pressure wash it out and leak test several more times through the restore to see if I opened anything new up. Will seal all rivets and seams with Maritex GLUVIT -- Just the inside not necessary to use on exterior.

 

Replaced hubs and installed new bearing buddies. Here are old bearings. This cost about ~$150 but was critical for safe trailering.



Replaced

 

Pressure washed interior for initial cleaning. Will need to strip a bunch of old hardware, bolts, some old wood and transom, etc. Will be important to give it a very good cleaning with industrial degreaser (i used TSP) again to remove leftover debris and contaminants (wd-40)

 

Used about a gallon of Citristrip to strip exterior in combo with the pressure washer and then a scotch brite pad. Then I used a Nyalox Brush to clean oxidization off the aluminum for a "brushed" look. I tried several of these brushes made by Dico and the one that went on my drill was the best. The angle grinder version left a trail of residue (melted nylon?) on the surface...no Bueno. RPMs probably too high on the angle grinder. You have to be careful with Angle grinders and aluminum. Wire brushes can burn through the hull quickly and take off too much material. This Nyalox brush was the ticket.

"Aircraft Remover" would have been quicker, most likely, but I didn't want the harsh chemicals.

Media blasting with Walnut shells is preferred for Aluminum based on my research as far as Blasting goes...but they want WAYYYY too much money for a little aluminum boat project. $400+ just to remove paint. Elbow grease and some stripper was the logical choice for me.

 

Many hours spent over several days with angle grinder and various wire brushes/wire wheels getting trailer stripped of most old paint and surface rust. Was going to replace rubber rollers but it's very costly. Also Bunks are suitable for a light weight boat like this and they distribute weight across the hull more effectively than Rollers...better over time for stress on rivets and seams to have bunks by my estimate. Look at all of the crap I pulled off of this trailer.

 

Bought two 2x6x10' and a 4x8' of 3/4" exterior grade plywood to make bunks and new transom. DO NOT use Pressure Treated Wood on Aluminum. It will cause Corrosion! I've seen a lot of guys doing this. Their hearts are in the right place but their research is lacking. If you read up on it you'll see the chemicals in pressure treating can react with aluminum.

Transom standard thickness for most of these small boats is 1.5" so I used the old transom which was in good enough shape luckily for a template, cut two identical pieces out of the 3/4" plywood, glued and clamped them together with Gorilla Wood Glue. Then I used Helmsman Spar Urethane for UV and Water protection on the wood. I chose Exterior grade plywood based on boat building forums research I did-- the marine grade plywood would work too but it is overkill for my application on Fresh Water and in the warm dry environment in AZ. For instance, if I was going to leave the boat moored in a Harbor in Seattle I might consider marine grade plywood. Obviously, cost was a factor too.

The bunks were not going to be exposed (I will carpet them) so I did kind of a quick job just sanding them down a little and did a sloppy drilling job so that I could countersink some bolts into the Bunk Bolster Brackets I bought.

I put 5 coats of Spar Urethane on the wood which took several days of application/ sanding/drying/repeat. Another option I was tempted to try is the "Old Timer's Formula" which I'll post some details on below the photos here.

Some guys use Epoxy Resin to protect wood, but it is a lengthier process involving more steps and more materials than would be worth it for my uses.








you can adjust the blend ratio of the varnish to suit your needs.
Once an additive is added to the mix, it is then called “modified”.
DO NOT return any modified product back to the original can or else
it will spoil the whole can. Which could be costly in the higher priced coatings.
One of many blends of a home-made penetrating sealer is to add the following products together:
1 part varnish
1 part boiled linseed oil
1 part (or a little more) of mineral spirits. Don’t use naphtha.

One note that I read is if you are in a really humid area where mildew is frequent,
skip the addition of linseed or tung oil and use a straight mix of 50/50 plain mineral spirits and your varnish for a penetrating sealer.

**CAUTION USING Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO)!! Any rags soaked with this stuff can combust if not discarded properly. Boiled Linseed Oil heats as it dries and exposed to air, it gets hot enough to start smoldering and will often catch fire. My buddy's mom burned their house down because she tossed BLO soaked rags in a box in the back of her truck and left it in the garage. POOF! Massive house fire.

Read warnings on the can and follow ALL directions with paints, solvents, varnishes, etc

 

Getting trailer ready to weld the bunk brackets on.

Bunks varnished and carpeted. Used a pneumatic stapler to attach the carpet. I bought a 4' x 12' section of indoor/outdoor carpet for about $12 at Lowes. I debated using Adhesive to secure the carpet to the bunks but decided it would be easier to replace the carpet later maybe without the adhesive. We will see how it holds up.

Transom also completed with 5 coats of varnish. Ended up sticking it into the back of the boat and drilling out holes before I varnished it to ensure everything would be lined up and the holes would get a little bit of the sealant /varnish as well.

 

Decided to go cheap and spray trailer with rustoleum. I used Universal Bonding primer from the rattle can to prep the Galvanized brackets. For the steel I used a quart of Rusto Clean Metal Primer. For topcoat I used regular Rusto Protective Enamel Black Gloss thinned with Xylene per the Rusto tech instructions. It all flowed well through my cheap little Husky guns (I have a Gravity Feed Conventional for primer and a HVLP for the topcoats). It came out OK. For the record I don't care for rustoleum though a lot of the budget minded boat guys seem to like it. It just takes forever to harden/cure and even when it does, it is a softer paint which will chalk and fade quickly over time when compared to a quality Urethane or Acrylic Enamel. Price is MUCH higher for the latter types of paint however.

I read some good feedback online about using Valspar Enamel Hardener with Rusto so I added some to the topcoat. Make sure you wear a VOC respirator! You can pick one up at the big box stores for $30. I wouldn't trust my lungs to a Harbor Freight respirator. You especially want this if you're using spray guns, you'll get a lot of vapors and this shit can fuck up your lungs quickly!!

 

Nicely done ​

 

Trailer completed. Couple of things I added that were not in this pic and that did not come on original trailer -- Wheeled tongue jack, bolt on spare tire holder, new bow stop roller assembly (which I had to re-drill and cut down to fit better), rewired trailer inside the Frame / Angle Iron using "Grote" wire clips to hold it in place. Used a wire loom to protect the wiring up on the tongue. Used some Liquid Electrical tape on my splices, wire cap nuts and to close the ends of the wire loom. Noticed the trailer tongue curves just to the left (that's what she said) but had a buddy follow me and we double checked that it still tracks straight. Not enough of a concern for this light little boat to get worked up over it. Going to leave as is. If you start bending metal (use a frame straightener?) it could cause more problems than I started with anyway.

In hindsight, not a fan of the way this winch post is set up. I think the trailer is a home-made/cobbled together thing and perhaps not originally for this boat. I stripped it down, cleaned it up and did the best I could with what I had. In the future I may look at revising the setup.

 

Replaced loose rivets or broken rivets with new brazier head rivets. Then applied Maritex Gluvit epoxy to all rivets and seams. Leak tested after about 24 hours cure time and she's bone dry. Used

$30 3M 5200 (06504) Permanent Bonding and Sealing for Boats and RVs Above and Below the Waterline Waterproof Repair, Black, 10 fl oz Cartridge

3M 5200 Marine Sealant on Rivets to give some added surety to the seal. That stuff is TOUGH as nails and flexible. It will hold up a LONG time and MUCH better than RTV Silicone. Keep some Lacquer thinner or Acetone handy for cleanup, that stuff is MESSY and can be difficult to remove from anywhere you don't want it. Keep in mind the 5200 dries SLOW. It took over 24 hours to dry tack free here in Arizona so imagine in the humid or cooler climates it maybe even longer. Patience!

On the rivets most used on these little aluminum boats are 3/16" but you'll want various grip lengths and there were a couple oddball areas (like the support braces/spars on the benches) that required large or oversized rivet heads but still only 3/16" diameter shaft. Grip length of the Pop (aka Blind rivets) varies as well depending on what you're trying to secure or attach. The thicker the piece obviously the longer the grip length you'll need. If you're just plugging holes in the side of the boat you'll want solid rivets as the blind (pop rivets) are NOT waterproof.

On using Solid Rivets -- Watch some youtube videos and get smart on working with rivets. There is a knack to getting Solid Rivets (brazier head rivets) "perfect" but we aren't building an airplane here. Don't be overwhelmed or intimidated by them. You don't need special tools, a $100 bucking bar or pneumatic hammer to Rebuck solid rivets. The information and demos are out there...if you spend an hour watching videos you should be well-equipped to deal with them for a project of this magnitude. NOT rocket science!!!

For blind rivets/pop rivets you can buy a $20 heavy duty rivet puller at Harbor Freight and they work GREAT. Much better than the little handjob squeezer pop riveters which cost more at big box stores.

I lucked out and had a neighbor who had a Pneumatic Rivet hammer and bucking bar because he built a kit plane. This made doing the solid rivets go SUPER quick. However I could have used a heavy flat faced hammer and a solid block of Steel to buck the solid rivets.
note the bead of white 5200 sealant I placed on the bow seam

 

$300 worth of paint...this is where I hope I don't screw this up

Hindsight moment. Use Yellow 3M automotive tape for masking. It adheres and STAYS much better than the crappy blue 3M shit. Frog tape (green) expensive and not much better than blue 3M tape.






Degreased the surface with Wax and Grease remover the night before paint. Rescuffed the aluminum with scotch brite pad the morning of painting and wiped down with Solvent prior to Primer. Prep prep prep!

 

As far as painting goes, if you have access to a paint booth it is MUCH preferred.

Also do your research on painting aluminum! It is a difficult substrate to paint if not using the proper preparation or materials. For this application (my boat) modern Automotive grade Epoxy Primers will usually do OK but you still have to ensure the surface is properly cleaned, degreased, scuffed, etc. If I was going to do a Rusto job, I'd have used their Self-etching rattle can primer then shot the topcoat over that. Manufacturers used to use Zinc Chromate primers. Don't believe public can access these products today -- very toxic stuff. You can use alumaprep, alodine wash/ acid wash, etc. Epoxy Primer was just simpler for me and it will work.

If the boat was going to sit in saltwater, that's another ballpark all together.... you'd want to use a quality Marine Bottom side paint for the underside of the boat. Maybe a quality polyurethane topside paint for anything above the waterline, etc.

Also I have a 30 Gallon Compressor and a 20 Gallon Compressor and in order to keep from burning them out I had to constantly switch hoses. Luckily a buddy of mine helped me out switching hoses when one compressor would drop below 90 PSI while the other caught up. Painting here in AZ this time of year is very difficult and painting outside is always tough. It is an uncontrolled environment. If you want a GOOD quality finish and no possibility of trash, bugs, dust or debris in the paint you MUST use a paint booth. My situation was that I didn't care so much about a quality finish but I did want a DURABLE finish which is why I went with the automotive epoxy primer topped with a single stage urethane topcoat. I feared with Rustoleum I'd be sanding and repainting the boat again in less than two years and that prep is a bitch. This boat will be covered but stored outside so I didn't want to use the rustoleum route because of potential environmental effects. Time will tell how this holds up.

The paint window in summer here is very narrow. Basically you have first light (85 degrees at 0600) to about 10am before it can get up over 90 degrees. You don't want to be painting in direct sunlight if you can help it, and if air temp gets too hot it causes problems with flash times and solvent pop. You also have to use the right solvents so the paint dries SLOWER here. I used a slow dry reducer. If I was somewhere cooler and more humid I'd probably use something that flashes off more quickly.

I had some self-imposed challenges. The worst was probably going with a 1.4 tip on my primer gun for this epoxy primer. It just did not flow well at all even at 4:1:3 (reduced 3 parts). Coverage was very slow and the finish was "dry" or rougher than I wanted. I could sand it down, knock it down, reduce further and repaint or go with it. The other option was to go online, order another tip for the gun and wait a week. I decided to just go with it. Again the finish was not as much of a concern as the durability. I knew my surface prep was solid so the paint would adhere.


Exterior paint done



Crappy orange peel on test spray area -- not flowing right through the gun

 

The next weekend I prepped for interior painting. For this I used the same epoxy primer and a Single Stage Urethane custom mixed by my local auto paint & supply store. I wanted a light gray, satin finish for the interior (not too hot, not too much glare on the eyes when fishing) I really like the way the interior turned out! A little trash in the paint here and there which was expected for an outside hackjob. The Gluvit Epoxy left some runs which showed up under the paint but mostly on the bottom portion of the hull which will be covered with Carpeted Flooring eventually anyhow.

Also you'll note I did not go through stripping all of the interior paint (MAJOR ASS PAIN!) -- advice and research yielded the following: if the original paint is adhering to the aluminum, do not remove it as they did something right the first time! Scuff/sand and scour the OEM paint to remove ALL chalkiness. Wash and degrease again! I think I went through several cleaning cycles to make sure the paint was good to go. I scuffed and prepped the bare aluminum areas the same as I did on the exterior and shot the primer over it. No issues going on two weeks now. We will see how she holds up over the long haul.

Again my research tells me the benefit of a Urethane paint here is that it is highly resistant to environmental exposure (UV Rays, heat and cold) as well as to chemicals (gasoline, oil, etc). Was it necessary to use such expensive paint? Probably not. Could I have sprung for even more money and used Marine Grade paints? Sure. Could I have used Rustoleum and done it for less than a third of the cost? Sure. But spill some gasoline on a rustoleum painted surface and let us know how it works out? At any rate, you have options!

 

Installed clips using pop rivets for emergency paddle, fire extinguisher, tie down cleats, zig zag/rope cleats on bow.

Also for lack of a better solution, I bought a $10 Berkley 6-rod horizontal rod holder from walmart, cut the two brackets in half and zip tied them in place on the Bench support spars for a trial run. If I like how they work out I will rivet them into place.

Added boat registration vinyl numbers as well as OEM StarCraft Decals. I ordered them in gray as I thought it might complement the interior. I had already ordered the boat registration letters/numbers in black but now wondering if I should have done them in gray or white? Oh well easy revision down the road if I decide to go there.

 

Took up to one of our little stocked lakes for maiden voyage. Caught the first fish. Limited out on little guys. Electric motor only on the lake so I used my new 55lb trolling motor. Haven't bought a gas motor for it yet. Grilled up dinner!






P.S. Boat was BONE dry all day. Not a single drop of water leaked in ...well except for the fish splashing and I spilled a little beer...

 

Done.