1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Salon Entryway Sliding Screen Tracks

I got the new board made for the salon entryway, and it’s off to the paint shop to be coated with ICA base coat clear. One challenge I’ve been trying to figure out for the last…oh…maybe eight years or so, is what to do about the retractable screen tracks that fit in the salon entryway boards. The original tracks broke on removal back in 2008. Every once in a while, I go online and try to find replacements, but I’ve come up dry every time. I finally came up with an option that I thought would work. It ended up being a bit more complicated than I thought.

Knape & Vogt P2417TAN48 Plastic Sliding Door Track looks about right

I bought these tracks years ago for the 1/4″ cabinet slider doors in the heads. But I have two packs…plenty for the salon entryway.

The track fits in the slot of the original (cracked) board

It’s a bit too tall, though.

Bigger problem: the screen frame is 5/16″, not 1/4″

That’ll teach me to eyeball a dimension from memory instead of putting a tape measure on the actual part. But the thing is, no matter where I looked online, I couldn’t find a 5/16″ double track. So I started staring at the Knape & Vogt track and noticed there’s a lot of material to work with. If I can machine off the fat part that runs along the tip of the center section and maybe remove some material from either side…maybe I can make them work with my screen tracks.

First try with my table saw seemed promising…at first

Unfortunately, there’s a gap between my table saw blade and the table. As the track passes over the blade, there’s nothing supporting it on the outside edge. And the plastic is somewhat flexible…so it flexes….which is bad.

OK…that’s not going to work.

Things were going great until the track got about halfway cut, then it moved just a bit aaaaand there went the edge of the track.

Next I tried whittling it with a razor knife

That kind of worked, but the surface the screen frame needs to ride on was very inconsistent. What I need is something that’ll hold this flimsy track in position while it passes a cutting tool. Oh, and the tracks are 48″ long.

I’m gonna make a jig

Joint the 2×4 on my MiniMax FS35

That’s pretty

Next, I cut a slot in the 2×4

Nice fit!

The track slides smoothly through the jig, with no side-to-side slop.

A little work with a hole saw and jigsaw, and the jig is ready

I converted my ShopSmith to router mode, clamped the jig to the table and up tight to the fence. Time to do a test run.

It’s looking good!

The center track machined pretty well…the fat part at the top is gone

The near side of the track in the above picture is the one that got destroyed on the tablesaw. It works much better using the jig and router.

Finish machining the rest of the track to test the approach

I removed ~1/32″ of material from both sides of each track lane

It works!

Now that I know how to modify the tracks, I need to bring another set to the boat (having destroyed this one during R&D) and machine them. If you look at the aluminum screen frame in the above pic, you’ll see it could use some attention, too. I also need to replace the screens. While I’m at it, I’ll make the screens for the V-berth and aft stateroom hatches pretty, too.

Oh, and in other news, I took some time off the project in 2017 to cut up some trees I had taken down. I paid to have the stumps ground, but the tree company left a big chunk of stump in the ground, and it made a mound that I couldn’t level. I finally got that sucker out of the ground last week. It was right at the limit of what my Kubota BX23 can lift, but we got ‘er done.

Making firewood

That’s a lot of stump

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Salon Entryway Sliding Screen Tracks II