1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Starboard Aft Deck Mahogany

You’d think that being unemployed with the country shut down from all of this coronavirus hysteria would give me lots of time to get this Roamer project done. But you’d be wrong. It turns out that applying for jobs and keeping up on the unemployment claims (the missus’ employer furloughed everybody) takes a surprising amount of time. Ironic silver lining: she makes more on unemployment than she did working thanks to the multi-trillion dollar bill the government decided to put on our great-grandkids future credit cards. Also, responding to affidavits and other things associated with my Civil Rights and wrongful termination complaints is more than a full-time job. So, unfortunately, I haven’t been getting much boat project stuff done recently. But I do still have a bunch of things done that I haven’t documented yet. I just wrapped up my review of the Office of Civil Rights investigator’s report, which is due on Wednesday, so I thought I’d take a break and post some pictures to the blog.

1/4″ board leftover from the toe rail

This particular board has a huge difference in color from right side to left. Fortunately, the left side is just wide enough for the aft deck window surrounds.

Marked off and ready to cut

Two boards fit great!

That looks so much better than the spray foam insulation.

3rd board is fitted

That’s a tight joint

The upper board looks good from a distance

Up close, there are checks and internal cracks

That’ll telegraph through the varnish

That’ll cause problems with the varnish, too

Solution: saturate the cracked areas with slow cure epoxy

I’ll use one more leftover toe rail board for the other upper panel

Lookin’ good

Problem: the bracket sticks out past the framing below

There’s an angle bracket welded to the exterior panel of the aft deck enclosure, and that’s screwed to the fiberglass hardtop above. The problem is, the angle bracket is 1-1/4″ on each leg and the framing is 1″, so the bracket is sticking out too far by 1/4″ or so. That booboo from eight years ago is coming back to bite me in the rear now.

I think a rabbet might be the solution

Fortunately, this board is a 1/4 heavy

I removed 3/16″ with a freehand rabbet, which just clears the bracket.

That’s looking good

Need to knock a bit more off the right side bevel cut

Nice!

Tight joints

Here’s a scrap piece of the window molding

I cut those way back in 2012. It’ll be nice to finally get them installed, hopefully later this year.

Looking good!

The aft deck mahogany pieces are ready for varnish at this point, but first I want to do something about the bottom of the walls, where it transitions from mahogany plywood to either the teak decking or aluminum, where the original toe rail back here used to be. Boxing the whole thing in ought to do the trick.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Deck Mahogany Floor Boxes