A nice older couple Ferried me and my touring bike Wendsday from Bemus Point NY to Chatauqua Institute NY in about 20 min. For whatever reason wood boats seem to ride so much smoother then fiberglass.( I hope some of the engineers here can explain this) The engine was built by Cris Craft and is a Inboard.
http://www.classicboat.com/pictures/22-sportsman-28e-2nd-001-9in.jpg
I'm not a marine architect but I have read that the shape of the hull is what affects the ride, not the material used in its construction.
I went sailing on Lake Michigan once with my brothers, and it was a much more enjoyable experience than a powerboat could ever be.
CandOforprog,
The wooden boat you have posted is a Chris Craft Utility. This was one of the most popular models in the later years of wood boat production - up through 1960. The Chris Craft is called "bright finish" meaning is is fully varnished Phillipine Mahogany that allows the full beauty of the wood to be seen. Chris Craft was probably more famous for the Chris Craft "Runnabout" design which had only two or three cockpit seats and the entire boat was fully decked over. The "Runabout" was more for show and beauty and the "Utility" was much more practical because the passengers could walk about the entire interior of the boat for working, fishing, scuba diving etc. and had easy access to the engine located under a removable upholstered console which could also be used for a table or seat.
Chris Craft like most of the mahogany boat manufacturers after WW II started using Phillipine Mahogany - (dipterocarpaceae) for construction because of the extensive forests discovered during the war in the Pacific. Philipine mahogany, however, - which got its name in the days of sailing ships - is not a true mahogany because the wood is of a different species. The Philipine Mahogany requires wood stain to look like true mahogany and has the advantage of being a little stronger. True mahoganies are African Mahogany - (khaya senegaleasis) and Honduras Mohogany - (swietena macrophylla) and (swietena mahagoni) aside from their singular beauty are also famous for their strength, light weight and rot resistance which are why they are used so much in expensive boat building.
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The Chris Craft you rode in is of a hull design called a "plaining hull" and was designed to ride up on the top of the water as it developed speed. This idea was perfected around the turn of the last century in 1900 or so, and replaced the sharp bow "displacement hulls" which were designed to slice thru the water easily. Much higher speeds were developed with the "plaining hull" because of reduced frictional drag and it is still manufactured today.
In the mid 1920's the idea of adding a "step" into the bottom of the "plaining hull" resulted in the back half of the boat hull being shallower in depth in the water. The bottom of the boat about half way back took a step up allowing air under the hull reducing frictional drag. Higher speeds were obtained with the added maintaince of this "step hull" design which is still used today.
The "three point hydroplane" hull followed the "step hull" and is most often seen in Unlimited Hydroplane Racing - boat such as Miss Budwiser which go up to 200 mph use this design.
As a practical hull development most fiberglass boats today use a design called "off shore" design which was developed in the 1960's. In this rough water hull the bow of the boat extends down into the keel about half way across the bottom of the boat. This design is extremely good running in rough water.
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Glad you enjoyed the ride in the classic Chris Craft, it is a boat of singular classic beauty and time has destroyed many if not most of them.
Doc
Doc from what little I cand find the Chris Craft Engines were actualy made by FORD moter company?
CandOforprogress2,
The Chris Craft Company began with a family in Algonac, MI in the end of the late 1800s. Chris Smith was an all around guy who made a megar living on the St. Clair River and its delta tributaries into Lake St. Clair.
Chris worked at a boat livery on the river repairing boats and he eventually began to build boats. One of his most famous contracts was for the 1920 Harmsworth Trophy competition at the Ilse of Wright in England. Garwood a Detroit businessman and industrialist being the driver.
You have to remember that at that time Detroit was an industrial city second to none in the world and a Marine Racing Committee was formed to build a boat and compete in the race. Chris Smith built the hull which was a state of the art "plaining hull." The boat named MISS AMERICA was shipped to the English race and won easily. This would bring the British back to Detroit to try to reclaim the the trophy for the next decade. They came and raced in the Detroit River year after year but never succeded in ever re-capturing the Harmsworth Trophy. After World War II the trophy and race were re instituted and it has been occasionally raced for up into the 1980s.
Chris became fairly famous and the Chris Craft Company became one of the largest producers of recreational wooden boats producing a standardized mahogany runnabout beginning in about 1923.
Now this was about 5 years after World War I. At that time the US Government was sellling much of the material that was millitary surplus left over from the war including airplane engines manufactured during the war for American fighter planes.
A group of American industrialists had formed a company - among them Packard and Lincoln - went to work to design a truely remarkable V-12 Airplane engine called the LIBERTY L12. These expensive engines were sold surplus with all the parts and were mostly grabbed by boat manufacturers for speedboat production throughout the 1920s.
The LIBERTY aircraft engine included a steel crankshaft and rods with aluminum crankcase and individual modular cylinders with overhead camshafts Zenith carburators and duel ignition systems. I believe the LIBERTY produced about 450 horsepower which was substancial for the time and about the same amount of power a large Mercruiser produces today. Google - Liberty aircraft engine to see these run today.
It was not until these engines were used up and no more LIBERTY engines were available surplus, that the boating industry had to deal with finding substitute powerplants and it was not easy to replace such an engine built for the government war effort that was as substancial as the LIBERTY L12.
Chris Craft ended up producing its own V-8 marine engines at one point which were very heavy and lacked the 400+ horsepower of the old LIBERTY. Several other companies started producing marine engines such as Chrysler Corp which hand built marine engines in Marysville, MI. Ford produced engines that were used in some boats in the 1930's as did companies like Sterling Engine Company and Continental. All of these motors were made in Detroit. Remember that boats were never built in the production numbers automobiles were.
Depending on the year of production and the size of the engine Chris Craft power could vary a great deal.
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I am distantly related to Chris Smith through a great grandfather and own three mahogany speedboats myself.
Dr d, l am a Ohio boy, so I'm partial to Lyman's bring built in Sandusky, down the street from the inland Sea and their steel clippers. And last but not least, the Matthew's boat company's plant in Port Clinton. Oops wrong firm I guess.
Robert Wilson,
Lyman! now there is a ubiquitous boat company if there ever was one - they absolutely covered the earth with GENERIC and great boats! I can't even recount the number of classic Lyman boats I have seen in my life time - thousands and thousands.
Lyman boats were all UTILITY hulls with open type hull structure and motor under a console. This design was great for a work boat or fishing boat where maximum mobility of the operator was desired.
Lyman used cedar planked hulls not mahogany planking. Sometimes mahogany plywood was used for the deck and interior trim which was always finished "bright" and varnished.
The Lyman method of construction was the traditional use if the "lapstrake" design. "Lapstrake" was the construction method developed by the Viking people of ancient Scandanavia - Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. "Lapstrake is where one board of the hull overlaps the next hull board - kind of like a clapboard house.
Lapstrake is a very strong construction and is one of the reasons the Viking longship was such a formidable craft. Lyman took full advantage of this design and painted ALL its tough cedar planked Lyman "lapstrake" hulls WHITE in color. Yes all half million of them!
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Some of the classic mahogany runabouts I have seen are so rare that I have seen maybe only one or two in 40 years in the hobby. I have only seen 1 Truscott (made in Benton Harbor), 1 Belle Isle Bearcat (made in Detroit), 0 Dart, (made in Toledo), 1 Dachel Carter (made in Benton Harbor) 2 Dodge (made in Detroit), 3 DeWite (made in Detroit), 4 Garwood (made in Marine City) - and of course many many Centurys (made in Manistique), and Chris Crafts (made in Algonac) and Hackers (made in Mt Clemens).
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Some of these famous antique boat companies have been restarted and other companies have begun to make reproduction classic boats - Hacker is now made in upstate New York, off the original plans, last I heard Chris Craft was being re popped by Grand Craft in West Michigan. Century is still in business but just makes fiberglass copies of its classic wood boats, while Dart in Toledo has been restarted and is working in wood.
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Lyman I heard is still there in Ohio and will make parts for owners who are restoring their classic Lyman boats of the past.
LYMAN Built in OHIO of course!
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Their not building boats or doing repairs at their original plant which is now a marina.
The late great Mathews boat company designed and built the first double cabin cruisers, copied by Chris Craft, Trojan and pacemaker.
Remnants of the old inland Sea boat company still make fireboats and police boats.
The Boat was a 1954 Cris Craft Utility....So thats much later then 1925 so who stamped out the engine? Instresting that pleasure boats where made in Detroit and the height of pleasure boating may have been post WWII to about early 1970s. When I am in Buffalo I see more folks use there boats as floating cottages then actulay taking them out on the water.
Cando4progress2,
Well you seem to demand a 1970 answer for a 1954 boat.
Across the decades the suppliers of marine engines have changed from decade to decade. Take today for example - starting in the 1970s Mercruiser and Volvo have been leaders in boat engines both inboard and sterndrive.
Now Johnson Outboard Motor Company of Waukeegan, ILL invented the sterndrive concept in 1930, but with the Great Depression in full swing it was abandoned. Some Mercury Outboard engineers revived the concept in the 1960's and presented it to Karl K the owner of Mercury Marine. Karl told them to "go jump in the lake."
So the Mercury engineers went "under the table" and took it to Volvo of Europe. Volvo took the idea and developed it. When Karl K found out he sued for patent infringment demanded "a piece of the action" and so Volvo and Mercury went in together to provide both Volvo and MerCruiser sterndrives using General Motors engines. This is the way they are sold today.
This was fine until General Motors almost went bankrupt in 2009. At that time they stopped producing the large V-8 engines for Mercury Marine and Volvo. At that time Mercruiser took the blueprints from GM and had the engines made themselves by local machine shops in the Detroit area, namely Dart Marine.
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From the Great Depression onward automotive engines were adapted to marine use as a practical substitute for engines designed specifically for marine applications.
Chrysler Marine of Marysville, MI was one such custom assembly line for their marine products. They offered an 8 cylinder inline engine for boats that was produced from the 1920's into the 1950's. In 1941 Chrysler produced 2,500 marine engines and by 1946 they were making 12,000 per year. After this time the Chrysler original Hemi V-8 was produced starting in the 1950's for marine usage. Many of the fast Century and Chris Craft boats of the 1950's had this option as a high power producing engine.
Second in line of popularity in 1950 style was the small block Chevrolet V-8 - in marine format - which was usually 265 horsepower on a 350 cu in engine block. This Chevy automotive designed motor evolved into the sterndrive engine used by Mercruiser from the 1960's to today.
Ford Motor provided a marine engine line up to 460 cu inches that was also used by assorted boat builders beginning in the 1930's although not as popular as these other brands.
Later Chrysler used the 383 V-8 and 413 V-8 common to cars in the 1960's for boats. Like other manufactures the Chrysler Marine engines were made to rotate in both right hand and left hand directions so that when two were used together the right and left engines rotated opposite each other. Usually they had carburators similar to autos but designed for marine purposes without venting fumes into the boat - also ignition systems were usually duel points and modified for centrifical advance only. Crank pistons and rods were designed to run full power most of the time and were used with heavy mechanical adjustable valve gear unlike autos and the compression ratios were lower for use of marine gasoline. The last of these Chrysler 440 V-8 marine engines use the Holley Carburator SIX PACK set up of three two barrel carburators. Unfortunately this option only ran for a few years in the 1970's.
Grey Marine made small engines common to sailboats and utility boat power such as your Chris Craft 1954 Utility.
Chris Craft also produced its own very large displacement low rpm V-8 engines for its larger cruisers. Sterling Marine also produced some similar V-16 multi cylinder large boat engines with duel ignitions and Zenth carburators.
For any line of boat across any decade and year sometimes several manufactures of engines were available for boat purchasers to choose from. I remember the Century Boat Company cataloge I obtained locally in 1962 - Mahogany boats were offered with Chevy power and several Chrysler engine options. The ones I saw also used Chrysler steering columns and steering wheels similar to my dad's 1966 Chrysler New Yorker.
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Probably you could Google the 1954 Chris Craft boat line up and cataloge and pick up on the specific engine options for that year and boat.
General Motors did not "almost" go bankrupt. They actually did file for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 and went through re-organization.
The former bobo lo steamer Ste Claire is in danger again. She has been evicted from her current dock, due to a new business coming on line. She needs a new home plus 20000.00 bucks to get her towed.
So where exactly was the Cris Craft Plant? Was it rail served? I think it would make a instresting Model Railroad trackside industry.
I am not sure about the Michigan Chris Craft plant. But the their plant in pompano Florida was. Oddly enough I was having dinner on a buddy's 41 foot Chris Craft commander. He has her original paper showing it delivered to a Cleveland chris Craft dealer by rail in March of 1979.Remember the 41 commander had a 14 beam ( width ) and from keel to fly bridge over 22 feet tall. An oversize load for sure.
The bill also include a charge for 400 gallon's of gas that was priced at 50 cent a gallon. My last trip to fuel dock,,92 octane was 3.92 a gallon.
SS St. Clair is docked in the Rouge River near the Henry Ford plant I visited her by boat yesterday and is probably visible from the I-75 overpass that bridges the river.
The Algonac location of the Chris Craft boat plant is still marked by the large water tower that served it and is now a marina and theme restaurant on the St. Clair River. Chris Smith's elegant home in Algonac is still standing and may be owned by someone who does not even know its heritage.
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