craig craft

[MarkD]

Hey Coop

Nice to hear from you. That was a great boat - the last 3 or 4 I made for my self came out nicely - you bought one, Mike Mazer from Mass bought one, Carl Holt bought one too. I still have my last one from the 1977 Nationals - I bought t back from the Dawes' who had it out in the desert of Calif for a few years. I need to restore it one of these days and see if it still works oaky.

I saw you won BSR this year - congrats my friend. You have stayed with it all these years and still look great. We had some fun in those years for sure. I recall that we had so many more boats at the Nationals in the 70's - at Dayton in '75 I think there were 124 ASH entries, you had to get a fast 1st just to get in the finals. The good old days.

Mark

[Sutter's Gold Jr.]

Craig lived with us for a summer in Brookfield, WI and built a boat in the garage when Lee and he had spare time. I will see if I can locate some pictures. He also baby sat my brother and I...let's just say he wasn't very strict. As J-Dub pointed out earlier in the string...more to come from Craig Craft.

Btw...J-Dub...Lee called me after Seafair and told me he was really impressed with you and enjoyed the tour.

[Bucket]

Craig lived with us for a summer in Brookfield, WI and built a boat in the garage when Lee and he had spare time. I will see if I can locate some pictures. He also baby sat my brother and I...let's just say he wasn't very strict. As J-Dub pointed out earlier in the string...more to come from Craig Craft.

AH yes, I remember that summer. My family was leaving WI and Lee was taking my dad's place. I was able to spend some time with Lee and Craig testing the boat they built. Funny part is we moved to Seattle, I had looked Craig up a few times then lost track of him.

[MarkD]

Bucket

I also remember that boat as it had a very short cockpit area - a design feature Craig changed after that. I found a few more old photos of the early days and early boats - I will post them later tonight or tomorrow. I saw Greg & Craig Selvidge, Earl Garrison (now 88 and looking great) and Wayne Seeberg last week - lots of great old stories. We had lunch at the restaurant that was built on the site of the Craig Craft shop that burned down in 1977 or 78.

Mark

[Ron Hill]

I have really enjoyed your posts.... Some questions enter my mind, and some have been there for years.


When you guys, Craig, Greg, Dean, Earl, the teacher that lives on an island....He lived in California for a few years...Jan Christ... Who did your motor work? Or did you guys just do your own?

I know when Sutter lived in California, he bought a lot of new parts for his 20-H's from my dad....but it appeared to me that Lee did all his own (quite GOOD) motors.

Earl Garrison seems to be a very straight shooter, retired principal and all, but one year at the Winter Nationals he was DQ'd for having his head gasket on upside down????? I never really figured that out. Do you know anything about that? It sounds like something I might do, but not to go faster, seems it might leak anyway, jusy a screw up in assembly.

But has anyone heard of putting an OMC A head gasket on upside down?

Where most of your props Smith's....or did Joe Price do them? What about George Lockhart props...He made some good ones....I know Craig had some good Records by Joe Price...Craig showed me some stuff about "A" props.

Which KG-4 block did you like the best?

Which case?

Bring on the pictures!

[MarkD]

Ron

Most motor work was done on our own. Everyone had good mentors and it all came together in the mid 70's. Craig's best A motor - the Mark 15 we called "Goldie" - was built by Craig in the very early days with help from Lloyd Swanson. Lloyd did all the work for his son Dave Swanson who ran a Karelson A runabout in the 60's with great success. Craig passed on his knowledge to me. I also grew up with a neighborhood friend named Jon Rankin - and his dad made the coolest mini-bike anyone had ever seen. I recall his dad had a very nice machine shop. My brother and I grew up spending summers at our lake cabin and built a Glen-L plan hydro - and then bought an old 2 cockpit Sid Craft boat from Howard Anderson and a KG-4 from Mike Jones. When we wanted hardware for the Glen-L, we bought it from a guy that lived just up the hill - Leonard Keller - and my brother and I ended up working for him for years. We learned a lot from Leonard, and then as we got into racing, we discovered that my neighborhood friend Jon with the cool mini-bike - his dad's name was Bill Rankin. Most of you have heard of him from time to time. One of the best machine and motor guys ever. Hal Tolford also helped us learn about motors in those early days. As everyone does, we gleaned knowledge along the way from many others - Gerry Walin, Jim Hallum, Ron and Dewey Anderson, Ray and Dennis Lee, Bob Martin and many others who were kind enough to care about some kids from the north end of town to help them out and share once in a while.

Jan Christ and Earl Garrison (Earl is Jan's step-dad) mostly ran BSH and BSR -and they did their own work as best as I can recall. Earl was saying last week they had a mechanic who was not a racer help with motor work as well. I do not think that Earl would have ever even thought of doing any illegal stuff - I recall not even one incident or rumor about that in my day - and of course, the KG-4, Mark 15 and Mark 20 A and B Merc had no head gasket.........

I am not sure about Lee Sutter as he mostly ran alky stuff - A and B racing runabout - in my day and Ron Anderson did most of his motor work when I was around.

Props - we had them all - R. Allen Smith props were used when I set the ASH Kilo Record - it was Gerry Walin's prop and the same one he used with the Anzanis. I set a competition record with an R.Allen Smith prop as well, won the nationals with a Czpluski (from the Chicago area). One of my Joe Price props - a Kamic blank I got from Bill Rankin - won the ASH nationals in 1972. After I dumped in the elims with the fastest time of the week - I loaned it to Dave Hoggard and he won the finals going away. Most of my competition props I had were built and/or worked on by Joe Price and I did some work on them as well. Craig's props were also made and worked on by Joe Price and George Lockhart. I think his best one that he won the ASR nationals with was a Lockhart that George made for him from a Record blank in about 1969. In B, he had some made by Price, Hopkins, Smith and others. We tested a lot and used many sizes and shapes.

For boats, here is a short chronology:

In 1969, Craig borrowed a Price Craft runabout from Tom Schiedt and was the fastest ASR at the Nationals at Hinton, WV. He jumped the gun one heat and did not win that year. He came home and started building and designing boats. Craig is and was always very good with wood and design - he has a great feel for it (although unlike what some posted earlier, he had no aircraft design background - we were 17 and 19-20 year old kids then for God's sake). Jim Jatho helped with hydros early on, and they were of this style - kind of like a pointed nose Hedlund



Of course Joe Price was around (and he lived at the shop from maybe 1974 until it burned down) and he always helped with ideas and concepts, but Craig started building the runabouts pretty much on his own by 1972. One of his first, if not his first, runabouts was this one from that year.

Craig's ASR - testing with me:



and this ASR he made for Greg (with my brother holding him):


That same year, Craig made this hydro as a Kilo boat - new cowl design and many new features he thought up - these photos are from Modesto Kilos in 1972 - set the record at 61.291 mph (but disqualified later for BS reasons) but could read 62-63 mph pretty easily on the Keller speedo that Leonard had just calibrated for us. We let Gerry Walin take it for a test ride - it was his prop after all - and he came in saying "Geez-zus you guys - I had a tough time going that fast with my A Anzani not that many years ago". It was a fun but disappointing week. Learned a lot from that week about inspections, racing politics, and that its just not that easy to set records at the same speeds you can read on the speedo. Here is the "Barking Spyder" kilo boat - it later set the M Hydro record as well with Ralph Hildebrand driving:




More in the next thread

Mark

[MarkD]

Then we built this competition ASH for me using many similar design ideas from the Kilo boat and the first ones pictured above in this thread - ran it in ASH and a few BSH races - it was very fast and the coolest boat on the beach (to me anyway) - I sold this one to Steve DeFeo from New Jersey and he won the Nationals in ASH in 1973 at Utah in it - and his freind (Al Desiato ?) got third in ASH with it at Dayton in '74 (Steve won ASH again in '74 with a new hydro Craig built for him). One of Craig's B runabouts and Jan Christ in the background:




Later in 1972, Craig built his "Floater Boat" that set the ASR and BSR Kilo records with relatively huge increases in speed over the former records. Here is the first "Floater" after setting the ASR 1 2/3 mile competition record at Lawrence Lake:




After this, probably 1973 and on, Craig built competition runabouts with more features of the Floater (such as the duck-bill front end). I kept changing hydro design each year incorporating design elements from many sources - and finally ended up with this design in 1977 which I thought was the best of all I had built.



My brother in law Ron Anderson had some great ideas that he used in his A&H boats that he made with Bobby Herring. I used some of his ideas in this one combined with what I learned in prior years, but of course, the concepts and speeds slightly changed with a KG-4 for power instead of a Konig A or B.

More in the next thread.

Mark