1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Mahogany II

The aft deck beautification project is coming along well. The covering boards above the windshield turned out nicely, and so did the mahogany plywood panels. Next I got to work on more mahogany boards for the port and starboard sides of the helm.

Good thing I kept this old plywood

I’ve mentioned before that I always struggle with whether I should keep wooden scraps or toss them. This raggedy old panel has been sitting under the boat since we did the demolition so many years ago. It was one of the side panels on the aft deck. While the end is rotten, there’s solid marine plywood in there that will work great as a spacer.

Very solid 50-year old mahogany plywood

The spacer will be the mounting surface for the pretty mahogany

The spacer won’t be visible at all once the solid mahogany pieces are installed.

The bottom edge of this little triangular area will be visible, so it’ll be made of solid mahogany

It’s not elegant, but I don’t know how else to do it. The shape of the aft deck walls here is very different than the original. In retrospect, I should have had the guys fiberglass and paint that area so it was flush with the other fiberglass there. Too late for that…

Solid mahogany filler piece is done

Solid mahogany scraps are coming in handy here

I saved the 5/16″ thick scraps from when we resawed the toerail boards years ago. They’ve been sitting under the boat since 2013. I knew they’d come in handy someday.

See where I’m going with this?

Lots of ugly needs to be covered here

Similar challenges on the starboard side

Time to make some side covering boards

Before

After

Now do you see where I’m going with this?

Not bad, eh?

The upper window tracks on all of the Chris Crafts I’ve owned are generally hidden behind mahogany valence panels that are permanently attached. By permanently, I mean they’re screwed in place, bungs cover the screw holes, and then the whole board gets varnished or painted. That looks great until you have to replace a window or even just remove them every few years so you can scrub out the tracks to make the windows slide easier. Removing the bungs destroys them and generally messes up the varnish job. And when you’re backing the screws out, about 50% of the time the screw head will ding the edge of the hole and rip a chunk of wood out.

So what I decided to do here is permanently glue and screw these boards to the hardtop. They’ll be pretty and structural. Then, I’ll have another board that hides the window track, with screws on the backside going into the board above it. If I need to do something with the windows, I’ll just remove the screws, remove the board, and have easy access to the tracks.