1996 Sport Nautique Restoration Project

[bturner]

Wow that's some really good work there. Thanks for posting. I love seeing people's restoration work......

[Stevemo14]

I can feel your pain on the wet sanding. I think I put over 40 hours in mine, all by hand, and probably need to do the black again. Luckily the wood boat resto forced me to buy some boat lifting tools to make getting off the trailer much easier.

[jtryon]

amazing progress so far!

[SilentSeven]

Cool update. This boat is lucky to have you. And that might be the most oxidized boat I have ever seen...wow.

How are you generating your renderings? BTW, using that cad program to model if the boat fits in your garage or not is about the coolest thing ever. I need that skill!

And finally...sorry if this is captain obvious stuff..you'll want to hook that boom to the bow ring, not the lift ring. Guessing you know this but just in case.

[Timr71]

This thing is going to look great.

BTW, we did a family reunion on a lake north of Toronto a few summers ago. I think it might have been on Buckhorn lake. Does that sound familiar? Anyway, it was a long drive to get up there...from down here in the deep south.

[Canuck-Surfer]

[mention]SilentSeven [/mention]
Thanks for tip on the boom. I’ve never actually used a boom. Clipping it in the bow ring makes so much more sense now that you say it! I was planning on finding some online installation instructions before I actually used in the water. Any other tips with using it?!

For anyone else trying to repeat my digital models. I used a super cheap program for the garage layout called “Room Arranger”. I’ve used it for years to do interior room layouts. I think it cost something like $15. It also has the ability to do a simple 3D walk-throughs. It’s basic and cheesy but it gives you the idea when you’re trying to remodel rooms in a house, knock out walls or buy new furniture.

The boat renderings are all done in Inkscape, It’s a free open source project there’s meant to be a direct alternative to the crazy expensive Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is a fine program but hard to justify the cost unless you have a job that needs it. Both programs are meant for creating vector images. The easiest way to digitize an image is to print a picture, in this case a picture of the boat. Then take some tracing paper and pencil and trace the lines. Next you want to go over the pencil with pen or thin felt tip so that you get a solid line when you scan. Next, you scan the image and import it into your Inkscape drawing. You then use the trace bitmap tool to convert the lines into vector paths. From there you can draw new lines and start filling in colours. Another alternative method is to just scan the picture of the boat and import the picture into Inkscape And then do your line tracing directly on top of that picture. Once you’re done you delete the image and are left with your tracing lines. This is a very tedious method if all you have is a regular mouse though. It’s how I did the motor box drawing since it’s lines are pretty simple. You really want a digital drawing pen to do it this way. There are lots of how-to videos online how to convert jpg’s to vector in Inkscape.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Canuck-Surfer]

[mention]Timr71 [/mention]
Yes, Buckhorn is one of the big lakes over in the Kawartha region. It’s north east of Toronto and just south of Muskoka. It is a long drive from the south. Where in the south are you? I am originally in Atlanta native myself until I fell in love with a Canadian girl and moved up here!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Timr71]

We're in Birmingham, southern suburbs and boat on Lake Martin. That's southeast of Bham near Auburn, and southwest from the ATL. My wife's entire family is from Canada too, so we're up there a lot. Good luck with your restore.

I did a little bit of skiing on that lake. The resort we were staying at had a Tige' but that boat was in the shop getting a new damper plate, so I just skied behind their run about a bit. It was windy and choppy that day. We did see a few tournament ski boats come by early in the morning or late in the evening time. The water wasn't too cold, but it wasn't summer in the south bath tub warm either.

[Canuck-Surfer]

Since I wrote this massive update last night I’m realizing there’s a few other parts I left out.

One thing I’ve always thought is quite odd from a design view is that Nautique always loved their signature black framed windshields. On most of the 90s sports and skis, they have black windshields and black transom handlebars. But then the side railings were all chrome. It’s odd to me you’ve got so much different colour metals going on in the boat. So on my restoration it’s all getting turned black. I ordered the Roswell aviator pro tower last summer. And I’ve already taken all the handlebars, front eye hook, and windshield frame to be powder coated. I took a piece of the Roswell black tower and they did an exact colour match of the powder coat to the tower.

My windshield frame was in pretty rough condition. As it got abused over the years people started adding additional rivets and screws to reinforce it when it got loose. Once I took it apart it had holes everywhere. The powder coat shop recommended a aluminum welding shop for me to take it to. First the powder coat shop sandblasted all of the old paint off. Then I took all the pieces to the welder and he re-welded in all of the holes and grinded everything flush and square again. The welding cost $400 CAD. All the powder coating including the windshield and all the other pieces ran $325 CAD. So not so cheap but still way cheaper than buying a whole new windshield from White Lake/NP.com.

The internal glazing rubber strips that go between the glass in the frame are reusable but I would really love to source new ones. I’ve had zero luck in finding replacements. The big issue is going to be that the screw cover rubber that goes on the top of the windshield does not look good at all. I’m thinking I’ll probably be able to find the other seals at a glass shop. But that top rail I can’t seem to find anywhere. Anybody got any ideas?

[SilentSeven]

Thanks for the insight on the tools....Room Arranger sounds like something I could master....less confident on Inkscape.

There's quite a few good videos on how to setup a boom. Lane Bowers, long time pro footer and now running thefootersedge.com has good information on his youtube channel - I'd start there. https://www.youtube.com/user/DawgTV Looks like you have a barefoot international boom...that's good solid unit. There are some cheesy single cable hollow core booms out there and you don't want those.

We mostly use ours for teaching kids and adults to ski. We rarely foot as it's hard to get the needed water. Here's a few things that have worked for us.

- use the bow ring of course
- setup the boom on land to sort out your cables for the first time.
- I added some black auto wrap to the inside of my boom block to keep the block from marring up the ski pole.
- push the boom arm forward a bit so you're not at a 90 degree angle to the boat. This moves the rider forward and hopefully out of the chine spray. No fun getting spray blasted. You can also get a boom extension if this is a problem after it's pushed forward.
- run the boom higher than lower. Helps get the rider up. Also a too low boom is really hard to ride. Move passengers to the boom side to dip the boom so the rider can grab it.
- watch the boom block clearance to the motor box. Ours is always tight and it's easy to nick your motor box upholstery. This is super true if you have the contour boom which is what I have. If you have the straight boom, probably not a problem.
- make sure you have a gunnel pad. Should have one on the boom now but if not, you'll want to get one.
- use a boom tiedown. This is basically a rope from the boom along the gunnel to an aft cleat. The tiedown keeps the boom from bouncing up/forward if someone dismounts hard. Without this and with an adult rider, the boom can snap bounce which is no fun.

From there, amaze your friends. Best teaching tool ever. We have got oodles of kids and hesitant adults up on kneeboards / wakeboards/ skis with little drama. Start with hanging on to the boom, then switch them to a 2 ft rope tied to the end and then long line them.

[Canuck-Surfer]

SilentSeven This is such good info!! Thanks a ton. Our boom is the contoured version of a Barefoot International. It has a big black built-in pad to rest of the gunnel but it seems like that could still put black rubber marks on the gunnel. I ordered a big sheet of silicone heat mat to go under the muffler as the original pads are missing and the hull is getting worn. I have enough to put a piece on the bottom of the black pad and its opaque, so no color transfer or scratching since the silicone is so soft. Its 5 mm think which will be great.

Also, I will check out those pics.

I just uploaded pics of the windshield sand blasting and powder coating to the previous post in case anyone wanted to see them.

[Chris Parsons]

Here is the new plan...

A few more design notes: I am doing the carpet to SeaDek conversion, and SeaDek is going on the cap around the boat as well, just like the new boats. I am removing the side handle rails entirely and replacing SeaDek on the 45 degree angle surface where they were. I don't understand the point of them here. No one can reach them from any of the seats and people like to side on the side of the boat when floating without the uncomfortable rail under yer bum.... Also both the bottom of the clamshell engine cover and the observers seat base are getting faired and gelcoated. I am leaving carpet on the inside gunwales.

Also, more pics to come this week, but I've been in 2 other mid 90's Sports that have the rear storage cutout behind the engine cover. On both boats, its always used as an improvised rear facing seat shelf. So I am adding a small seat base there and the upholstery shop is adding 1" of foam backing to JUST the back wall of the engine cover so its more comfortable. I played with tons of vinyl design ideas for the back of the engine cover to accent the new "seat back" but everything I came up with looked forced or cheezy so I am leaving it simple there.

Colours illustrated below: Masters Blue smooth (features and boxing), Jet Black textured/softmax (shields), Anthracite Softmax (accents and wrap around), Jet Black (piping).

I really like the added gray from the original paint to the vector. Going to have to try Inkscape.

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk

[Canuck-Surfer]

Okay...I need some opinions here. As previously mentioned since my new Roswell R1 speakers with Black grills are larger, I have relocated the speaker holes in the combing bolsters so they fit. The wider speakers are too big for the narrow original speaker locations (if I want to recess them in, and I do!).

I'm not sure what I think about having the black speakers split halfway by the dark grey anthracite and top half white. In the Roswell 95 Super Sport restoration, they added an "accent" feature of vinyl that rose up to cover the diameter of the speakers. I like the idea. But it also adds a bit of complexity to the design.

I have illustrated both options here. Note: there is no actual white ring around the speaker...I have added this outline on the revised design just to visualize that the speaker is there since you can't really see it in the image. I have also attached pics of the new holes and the design from Roswell. When you look at the Roswell boat be sure to look in the bow area...I think the speaker "accents" up there look really good. However, I think I need to follow the same design in both areas for visual continuity.

[Canuck-Surfer]

Okay guys, I finished designing the last piece of the interior, the back of the motorbox. Updated images below. I have also illustrated the new seat base we are installing into the original cubby storage opening in the rear of the motorobox facing the rear couch. I am still on the fence about the black vinyl around the speakers as explained in the previous post.

I also changed the base colour of the top of the motorbox to black so the SeaDek there will look more integrated.

Thoughts/feedback?!

[Chris Parsons]

Love it.

What are you doing with the carpet on the base of the motor box? I filled it and did seadek there too.

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk