1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fitting a Veneer Panel For the Galley Bulkhead

The missus came out to help on the project. I armed her with a pile of sticks and a glue gun coming up to temp while I started pulling sheets of 1/8″ mahogany plywood out of the stack. Then we got busy finishing up the big panel work that has to happen before I can wrap up the V-berth cabinetry.

That’s a very complex shape

The missus makes a mean stick pattern

Mark off the pattern on the plywood

That’s a very spindly piece of plywood

Pretty good fit, but it needs some trimming

Since the glue gun was hot, we made the V-berth panel pattern, too

There’s a lot of epoxy, fiberglass, and fairing compound residue stuck to the wall here from when we did the V-berth head. That will all have to be sanded off before we’ll get a good panel fit.

Transferring the pattern to the V-berth panel

Not too shabby

Taped off and ready to apply contact cement

I’ve been thinking about using epoxy for the veneer work since it worked so well on the V-berth forward bulkhead panel. But I wanted to give it a go with 3M 90 High strength contact cement, since I’d been seeing in many places that contact cement is preferred for veneer work.

New mahogany veneer is bonded in place

It took 3/4 of one can of contact cement for this one panel, and I don’t like the bond very much at all. Price-wise, the contact cement is much, much more expensive than an equivalent amount of epoxy. Bond-wise, I don’t like that there’s a bit of ‘give’ in the joint. While the panel seems to be firmly stuck in place, when I squeeze the bulkhead and mahogany panel, I can see that the bond zone compresses just a bit, even after letting it cure overnight.

I have another Chris Craft, a 1968 42′ Commander, and the feux-teak paneling on that boat has more than a few spots where the contact cement let loose over time. That, plus the way even 3M’s best are behaving on this one panel has me leaning toward not using it anymore.

Bosch router helps clean up the cabinet opening

Looks good!

After cleaning up the corners of the cabinet opening, that was a wrap.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Back to the V-berth Cabinet