1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Deck Transom Framing and Floor Box Test Fit

The aft deck floor-to-wall zigzag boxes are looking good and ready to permanently attach. My last article covered the installation of the 120v wiring around the aft deck perimeter. The next steps are to frame out the transom so I can enclose that area with 1/4″ mahogany plywood, after which I’ll install the zigzag boxes.

Big chunk of OEM mahogany will make good transom framing

Chris Craft used this mahogany board to strengthen the original fiberglass aft deck wall. Since I modified the aft deck and built the enclosure to include sliding helm doors (someday) there was no need to reuse this board. It’ll come in handy for the transom framing, though.

First, I squared the board and sanded it clean

I don’t know what goop Chris Craft used to bond wood to fiberglass, but it’s hard as rock and only seems to stick well to the substrate in places that don’t matter. Where the bond was critical (e.g. the One-Mile Ray Searchlight backing boards) the goop let loose every time.

Next I lopped off a couple of inch-thick sticks

It’s not pretty mahogany, but it’ll do

Mark off the cut points

ShopSmith bandsaw is handy for this sort of thing

The rabbets are cut

Perfect fit!

There are two of these upright framing sticks, which are where three 1/4″ mahogany panels will butt up against each other across the transom.

With the transom framing cut and fitted, next I dry-fitted the pretty zigzag floor boxes.  Potential NSFW CAUTION: Wood Porn below!

For such big structures, these boxes fit very tightly to the walls and teak deck all along their length

I might trim off a bit of the box here…the 120v cable is tensioned by the unnecessarily long edge

The view when entering from the transom

The starboard side looks good, too!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Door Frames in Heavy Mahogany