1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Porthole Surround Panels IV

The pile of African mahogany panels I’ll use for porthole surround panels continues to grow while my painter and I try to coordinate schedules. It’s at the point that I think it might make more sense for me to build a sort of spray booth outside of the tent to expedite things. In the meantime, I continued cutting and fitting new panels to connect the port side of the transom cabinetry to the  starboard side.

The overhead panel on the left needs to be cut square

The sawsall I used to cut out the cabinets back when the refit began didn’t cut square. The wood is solid and it’s already the right width, so I’ll just remove it and square it up.

48 year-old marine plywoood, meet my EZ-One tracksaw

Good lookin’ plywood

They don’t make it like that anymore…

Nicely squared panel

Original fascia panel was unfortunately painted white

The fascia panel over the porthole opening is original Chris Craft-grade mahogany, but it was unfortunately painted white from the factory. I’ll run it through a surface planer eventually and see if the wood looks good enough to clear coat. If it doesn’t clean up, I’ll probably just cut new pieces. I’ve got plenty of long mahogany stock, so I may just cut one piece to go all the way across the transom.

Transom vent chute

There are polished stainless vent covers that go on the outside of the boat, but inside the boat the 1/4″ pressboard panel that Chris Craft used to enclose the vent chute had rotted away. I’ll use 1/4″ marine plywoood for the chute and coat everything with epoxy to seal it up.

Port side vent chute is rough fitted

Next, I marked the line for the chute panel, which takes a bit of a curve, along the backside of the new porthole panel.

Next, install cleats for the vent chute

I reused cleats we saved when we dismantled the boat.

Port side is done

…now on to the port

Back into the plywood stack

Tracing the old vertical pattern piece

Nice fit

Mini cleats secure the panel to the framing

Port transom vent chute is rough fitted

Attach cleats to the marked line

Pretty much done

Port transom vent chute is ready for coating

Squaring up and fastening the starboard vertical transom panel set the foundation for all of the other panels that I’ll make for the aft stateroom cabinetry. With the corresponding port side panel now locked in place, I can cut and fit the port side transom porthole surround panels.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Porthole Surround Panels V