1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Deck Helm Doors

I’m aiming to splash the Roamer in 2021. For that to happen, at a bare minimum, all of the holes above and below the waterline need to be sealed. The major holes that remain include the helm entry doors to the side decks, the opening across the transom on the aft deck, engine room air vent holes on the mahogany toerail and at the transom, raw water intakes for the Cummins main propulsion engines, and the bolt holes for the swim platform supports. Today’s article is about the helm doors I’m making.

I need a flat surface to make doors

I picked up a sheet of MDF and some 1″x4″ pine boards to make two boxes I’ll use to make the doors. There’s no other flat surface on the boat I can use to press 72″-long mahogany sheets onto the door cores, so building these boxes on the aft deck made the most sense.

Glued and screwed together makes a very rigid, stable box

Shrinkwrap plastic covering ensures epoxy won’t stick to the tabletop

In addition to the helm doors, I’ll also need to make mahogany interior doors for each stateroom and head. Chris Craft originally used a standard hollow-core door approach, but all of the original doors on this boat (even the ones that were never exposed to water) had failed joints and were coming apart when we started this project. So the approach I settled on will involve epoxying 1/8″ Lloyd’s 1088-rated mahogany plywood to 3/4″ super-lightweight Tricel honeycomb panels. The Tricel panels were stacked in a guestroom at my house for the last seven years. I bought the mahogany plywood last year, and I still have lots of fiberglass and epoxy from when we made the cabin top bullet-proof in 2013. So I’m not spending anything but time putting any of these doors together now.

Next, I cut the panels to size

Once the Tricel panels were rough cut to size and test fitted, I used my Harbor Freight fake-Fein tool to cut the honeycomb from the perimeter of the panels. Then I cut solid mahogany into 5/8″x 1-1/4″ strips that’ll go into the voids where there’s no more honeycomb around the perimeter. That will give the slider hardware mounting screws solid mahogany to fasten to, and it makes a solid edge all the way around the perimeter.

Solid mahogany ready to fill the edges of Tricel panels

Wood flour-thickened epoxy will permanently bond the mahogany to the Tricel

The helm doors will be very different in appearance from outside to inside. The outside surfaces, including all edges, will be fiberglassed, then primed and painted with Awlgrip Matterhorn White to match the exterior paint. The interior face will be done in ribbon stripe mahogany, same as the rest of the aft deck.

Next, wet out 1/8″ mahogany plywood with epoxy, then trowel on thickened epoxy

Both the mahogany plywood and the Tricel panel face got wetted out with epoxy to ensure a permanent bond before applying the thickened epoxy. After clamping the mahogany to the Tricel, I left it to cure overnight. The following day, I cut the window openings and called in the Boatamalan professional to do the fiberglass work on the exterior of the door.

The exterior door surfaces got 1708 fiberglass and epoxy treatment

For the window frames in the doors, I’m using the remnants of the pultruded fiberglass I-beams I used for the window frames on the rest of the aft deck enclosure. There was just enough I-beam leftovers to do both helm doors!

Faired with epoxy thickened with glass bubbles and fumed silica

Of course, there are fillets at the window frame-to-flat-panel joint. I do love my fillets.

Fairing compound is cured and ready for sanding

Very hard to find door latch hardware

I literally spent years trying to figure out what door latch hardware I’d use for the helm sliding doors. Since mine are based on 3/4″ Tricel panels, they’re quite thin and relatively lightweight. Little did I know that most marine sliding exterior doors are much thicker, so practically all of the door latches I found were for doors 1-1/2″ to 3″ thick. But finally, late last year, I found a marine hardware supplier called The Brass Works, Inc that had narrow style sliding door latches. I decided to keep it simple and go with the non-locking type, since I’d rather have a thief open the door than slice the canvas I’ll eventually have on the transom.

Final test fit with door hardware in place

My Roamer has sliding helm station doors that latch! This is HUGE!!!

After the final test-fit, I removed the doors and started prepping for varnish.

Sanding mahogany with Mirka 220 grit Abranet

Ready for ICA base coat clear varnish

First coat of ICA got soaked up almost immediately

Second hot coat of ICA

Third hot coat of ICA

ICA is some nasty smelling stuff. So I left the tent and came back the next day.

Looks good!

Next, I rolled on a coat of Awlquik primer on the the exterior surfaces

Same shot, but with a flash

On the opposite side, there’s pretty mahogany

Coating the mahogany with ICA first protects the wood from any Awlquik that gets up under the tape. If any gets through, there’s plenty of clear coat to sand the primer off without breaking through the ICA.

I’m still waiting for the lower helm door guides to arrive. Hopefully, they’ll be here within a week.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Deck Canvas