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

First off, thank you so much for the donations to the tip jar! Every little bit helps and I really appreciate your contributions, especially with this pandemic hysteria that’s tanked the economy.

That said, I’m cutting up the last of my really big mahogany lumber today.

15′ x 7-1/2″ of 8/4 mahogany

I’m going to turn this into two heavy helm station door frames…well, the forward upright timbers of the door frames, anyway.

Getting set up to cut a bit off a split end

Next I split the board

I’m all giddy!

I loaded the two boards into my truck and took them back to my home shop for jointing.

My MiniMax FS35 jointer will have no problem jointing these boards clean and straight

Ummm…Houston, we have a problem.

Way back in 2017, I bought myself a MiniMax FS35 Jointer/Planer because I knew I’d be machining lots of rough-cut mahogany lumber as part of the interior refit. The MiniMax is a great machine, with a 220v 3hp motor and 14″ cutter head. It worked great for jointing those gorgeous aft stateroom valence panels, the helm windshield and side window opening lumber, and the very nice helm radio box.

But sometime between November 2019, when I last used it, and now, something went haywire in the beast. I got all ready to pass a board through, hit the Start button, and all it did was hum. The cutter head turned maybe one very slow revolution before I hit STOP. I checked the breaker, hit the Reset button, all to now avail. Confirmed 220v at the plug. It’s got what looks like the original start or run capacitor on it, and though the capacitor case didn’t show signs of trouble, it sure seemed like it was the most likely cause of the trouble.

That’s a funny looking capacitor

Leave it to the Italians to go with non-standard gear on their fancy machines. Also, note the somewhat crunchy appearance of the wires and loom. I believe this is the problem.

There’s no sign the smoke got let out of this one

But there aren’t any marks on the capacitor indicating its rating

My MiniMax is an Italian machine from the mid-80s, so there’s very little information about them online. I had a 370v 220 microfarad AC compressor start capacitor and figured I’d give that a shot. After wiring it up, I hit the GO button….and she started! But judging from the sound, the cutter head was only turning at around half its usual RPM. As I went to shut it down, there was a POP! and all the smoke got let out of the start capacitor.

Must have been some stale smoke, because it really stunk.

After opening the big shop doors and ventilating the space, I recognized my own limitations and decided not to guess anymore on what size capacitor I needed. I removed the motor from the machine and took it to Wenger’s Motor Service in Mechanicsville, MD.

Let me tell you, the engineers who packed a lot of big board jointing capacity into this relatively small footprint did an admirable job. The downside is that servicing the machine (e.g. removing the motor) is not a task easily done by a normal sized American with only one elbow and one wrist joint on each arm.

The following morning, Wenger’s called to tell me the motor was ready. After $37 and another drive through Amish country, and I was back at the woodshop.

The Southern Maryland zip tie approach isn’t as elegantly executed as the original Italian, but it works

Also, note that the MiniMax comes originally with an isolation transformer (the grey box to the right of the motor, presumably to stabilize voltage input to the motor across the European market, where quantity and quality of line voltage may vary from country to country. I doubt it’s really necessary in the US, and it absolutely complicates R&R motor service, but I decided not to experiment and just reinstalled it with the motor.

Back in business!

If anybody’s interested, the mid-80s yellow MiniMax FS35 uses an rd-40-370 run capacitor.

With my jointer woes resolved, I got to jointing the big mahogany bits. Caution: wood porn ahead.

Two passes on each face, and that mahogany cleaned up real nice

Both boards are jointed

I have a dust collection system in the Roamer tent that I wish I had here at the house, especially when using the MiniMax. But the fact of the matter is, I need it more at the tent and I don’t need two of them.

That’s two stacked 6′ 5″ long boards, jointed smooth enough you can hardly see where one begins and the other ends

Back at the boat, I ran the boards through my Dewalt thickness planer to exactly 2″ thick

That’s the idea!

The starboard side board will cover the wire chase/hardtop support and form the forward pocket for the sliding door

I hope my text explanations of what I have in mind make sense. I can see how it’ll turn out in my head, but putting that into words is sometimes difficult.

Cut to exact length

I cut the boards so they just fit with a light push into position from the teak deck up to the big overhead mahogany pieces that run along the top of the window and door frames.

Nice fit to the zigzag floor boxes, too

When I took these pictures, I hadn’t varnished the zigzag boxes yet.

Next, I used my Bosch router to radius the inner corners

Nice!

Before I install these door frame timbers, I’ll coat them with ICA base clear. But since that stuff is super stinky, first I’ll make the mahogany filler pieces for the transom step-through and a few more bits to wrap up the woodwork on the aft deck.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Deck Transom Mahogany Panels