1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Resawing Big Mahogany Boards

I’ve been working for a while now on the next step in the process of spraying the ICA top coat clear in the interior: installing the headliner. I know…it makes no sense, but it is what it is. I’ve got all of the support panels installed around the aft stateroom that the Whisper Wall tracks will attach to. The last thing I need to do is make and install some mahogany fascia panels that go above the aft stateroom portholes. Chris Craft used mahogany boards, too, but they painted them white. And the primer they used goes so deep into the wood that I can’t remove it all without removing enough material to make a 1/2″ thick board 3/8″, which would not be a very robust fascia board. So I’m going to make new fascia panels. I’ve had some big mahogany boards sitting in the stack for ten years, and I knew someday they’d come in handy. Today’s the day!

The smaller mahogany stash

I’ve got an 8/4 rough cut board stash under the boat. I put the thinner, 4/4 and 5/4 finer cut boards under the stairs and scaffolding at the back of the boat.

Going to the big woodshop nearby

These boards are leftover moldings from a golf club contractor job that I bought off craigslist a decade ago. They’re 1-1/8″ thick, and I need to have them resawn down to 5/8″. After I send them through my jointer, the final thickness should be 1/2″, which is the size I need for the new fascia panels.

Awaiting the big saw

I wish my own woodshop was this big!

Going through the resaw machine

Sorry for the fuzzy pic, but my phone was all I had on me. This big resaw machine has a power feed table. It split this 12-foot board in about five seconds.

Resawn mahogany boards back at the boatyard

I’m sure the leftover molding planks will come in handy somewhere…but that’s for another day.

Old fascia panel on a new board

You can see that stripper left a lot of white primer deep in the grain

Unlike Chris Craft, I don’t intend to have white fascia panels. Clear coated mahogany ones should look much better.

The backside of the original fascia shows pretty, unpainted grain

I don’t know what Chris Craft was thinking, painting that white!

Back at my own tiny wood shop

These are big boards that need to be jointed. I’ve got a big MiniMax FS35 jointer that can handle 14″ wide boards, but these ones are too long for my shop!

First, I had to make in-feed and out-feed tables in the same plane as the jointer

Finally! Jointing the boards!

I’ve never messed with boards this long. To keep constant pressure on the boards as they pass over the jointer cutter head, I used cork sheets to create friction and a long push stick. It ended up working pretty well. The boards are jointed and ready to go back to the Roamer, where I’ll finish turning them into fascia boards.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Aft Center Fascia Board