1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Doors

This article covers the aft stateroom doors I made using lightweight Tricel honeycomb panels and 1/8″ mahogany veneer plywood.

I’m using 3/4″ Tricel panels for the interior doors

As with the aft deck helm sliding doors, I’m using Tricel panels for the interior doors because they’re lightweight and much better suited to the marine environment than standard hollow-core doors.

All these Tricel panels are rough-cut for specific door openings

This one’s for the aft head

Mark off the panels in preparation for final test fit

Take off a bit here and a bit there…it’s ready to test fit

It’s square to the wall panels, but too tall and too wide

Lengthwise cut and…

Height cut…this door panel is ready for the edge treatment

Next, I test fitted and marked the aft stateroom entryway door for the final cuts

After cutting the panel to fit, I used my Harbor Freight universal tool to trim away 1″ of the Tricel honeycomb all around the perimeter of the panel.

Solid mahogany filler pieces are ready to be epoxied into the panel edge

I use wood flour-thickened epoxy as the glue to bond the mahogany solid stock to the Tricel panel edge

After putting thickened epoxy inside the panel, I wet out the solid stock with straight epoxy, then shove the solid stock inside the panel edge.

Once the epoxy cures, I cut out the solid edge to accommodate the door latch hardware

I had all of the original Chris Craft door hardware rechromed

They’re really beautiful, very well made, and period-correct.

Next, I mixed up a bunch of epoxy for the mahogany door veneer

I’m using the door clamping boxes I made in 2020 to assemble the door panels. The boxes are dead flat, heavy, and covered with shrink wrap film so any epoxy that squeezes out won’t stick.

After wetting out the least-pretty side of the 1/8″ ribbon stripe mahogany veneer panel, I applied wood flour-thickened epoxy. Then I spread it out evenly with a notched trowel. This is the same approach you’d use with floor tiles held down with adhesive. But since this is epoxy, I also wetted out the Tricel panel face to ensure a permanent bond.

Next, I pressed the wetted out side of the Tricel panel onto the veneer

Then I repeated the process on the other side, but with the thickened epoxy applied to the Tricel panel

Nice!

Epoxy squeeze-out looks good

Door clamping box #2 goes on top of the glued up panel

I use lots of Harbor Freight clamps to apply just enough even pressure to ensure uniform epoxy squeeze out

I’m going to wrap up this post here. I can’t make any promises when I’ll post next, but I’ll try to get back on a more regular schedule. Stay tuned!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Wrapping Up the Aft Stateroom Doors