1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Varnished Mahogany Panels in the Aft Salon Cabinet

I’ve been varnishing lots of 1/8″ mahogany plywood panels for the OEM cabinet interiors with Minwax Urethane Clear Gloss. They turned out pretty nice, and now it’s time to start installing them.

That’s a lot of varnished plywood pieces

Good thing I marked them on the back-side so I’d know where each one goes and its orientation. 😉

Next, I took a grinder to the OEM paint

That 50-year old paint was ugly, but it was also thick and still very well adhered to the plywood below. So instead of stripping it entirely, I roughed it up with 36 grit on a sanding pad, using a small disk on a grinder and then a multitool to get into the corners. Once it was all roughed up, I mixed up some US Composites blush-free epoxy and wetted out the cabinet interior and back of the mahogany panel. I’m using epoxy for this veneer work because it’s been my experience that contact cement just doesn’t do as good a job. The edges and corners of veneers attached using contact cement inevitably peel up years down the road. I want this bond to be permanent.

Once I’d wetted everything out, I mixed some wood flour into the epoxy and troweled on a bit more to act as the glue. Then I put all the pieces in place. After pressing the panels home, I went through with a squeegee to scrape off excess glue that squeezed out. Then I wiped down all of the joints with alcohol to remove any trace of epoxy residue.

Panels are in and clamped in place

Every stick is part of an essential clamp or pad to protect the varnish. I find that 1/8″ mahogany scraps are very useful for clamping interior pieces like these. They’re flexible, and can be bent into position then act like a spring to keep gentle pressure on the varnished panels.

The key at this point is to stop messing with it and just go home

Touching any of the pieces or even vibrations from walking around can cause the clamps to fail and fall. When one goes, it takes out all of them in the area. It’s best to just go home, let the epoxy cure, and come back the next day.

Et voila!

That turned out pretty good! Remember, this is what it looked like before:

I still have to make the fiddle for the leading edge of the shelf, and I need to cut a couple more panels to finish out this cabinet. But I think this was worth the effort.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Varnished Mahogany Panels in the Forward Salon Cabinet