1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Varnishing the Aft Deck Mahogany

AHOY!!!

I apologize for the three-month hiatus on posting. As I mentioned several posts back, trying to get re-employed and dealing with a wrongful termination complaint is extremely time-consuming. The level of federal corruption I’m encountering through all of this is truly stunning. There are people who’ve been imprisoned for violating one of the same laws my managers did when firing me…but the federal overseers on these things thus far don’t seem interested in referring them for official investigations. It’s almost like this law only gets enforced when it’s applied to political targets and ‘little people.’ I should write a book…

Long-time readers will know that I’ve had my share of setbacks on this refit, but this has by far been the biggest gut-punch. It’s difficult keeping up enthusiasm and investing time on this blog given my current status. Thank you for sticking around while I try to get my life back in order.

When last I posted, I had built a giant Aft Deck Mahogany Floor Box to cover the transition from the port aft deck walls to the deck itself. The next step was to make the starboard side, then varnish the boxes and other wall panels using ICA two-part catalyzed urethane base coat.

The port floor box

Port & starboard aft deck floor boxes are ready for varnish

ICA base coat is really smelly stuff, so when I use it I prefer to varnish lots of stuff at the same time. Since I already cut and fitted a bunch of beautiful mahogany solid stock to surround the aft deck windows, I decided to get it all varnished in one go.

After sanding with 220 grit Mirka Abranet, I fired up the compressor and blew off all the dust, then wiped everything down with a lintless cloth soaked in alcohol. Next, I mixed up a batch of ICA base coat clear and rolled and tipped three coats on the boxes and the mahogany window surround pieces.

Lots of mahogany parts, sanded and ready for ICA

First coat on the floor boxes really makes the grain POP!

First coat looks good!

By the time I put the first coat on all the pieces, the big mahogany boxes were tack-free, so I applied another coat, and then repeated the process for a third coat.

Three hot coats of ICA base applied using the roll & tip process

First round of three coats applied…time to go home

Next day, the ICA is cured and ready for sanding with 220 Mirka

Ready for the next three coats

That’s some beautiful mahogany

Three coats later

NICE!

And three final coats on the aft deck floor boxes

By the way, if you haven’t used Mirka Abranet sandpaper, I highly recommend it. It’s tough as nails, and with a good vacuum the dust collection is better than any paper-backed sandpaper I’ve ever used. Very little dust goes airborne or is left behind on the sanded surface. I find it works best with two-part catalyzed urethanes or very well-cured one-part finishes. With one-part spar varnish, it takes weeks or more for the finish to be cured hard enough not to gum up the paper.

Anyway, that’s a wrap for now on varnishing the aft deck mahogany. Apologies, again, for the long delay in posting.

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Salon Entry Door

Well, the personal disaster continues apace and the Roamer project is commensurately throttled down. But I am still getting stuff done as time permits. I thought installing the salon entry doors would be a breeze, but an old nemesis of this project has reared its ugly head again.

I’ve written before about problems I’ve discovered on the port side of the cabin top–the broken salon fiberglass under the helm window, the mahogany safety rail in that area that was clearly not original, the stainless stanchion pipes that had obviously been replaced. My theory is that when they were doing the repower to the twin turbo Super Seamasters back in 1972, they dropped one of the original engines on the port side helm windshield as they were lifting it out through the salon ceiling hatch, which broke the salon roof and the mahogany safety rail, and bent some of the stainless stanchions as the engine assembly tumbled off the cabin top. Whatever it was, the incident also caused some of the salon ceiling frames to get knocked out of alignment, which I wrote about when we were installing the Whisper Wall headliner tracks in the salon.

The problem is, everything is connected. We made the cabin top look nice (it’s literally bullet-proof, by the way) , and the headliner covers the ceiling frames that got knocked out of alignment. But those frames still support the dashboard and are connected to the bulkhead, which are what the salon folding hatch and entry door attach to. The doors and hatch panels are straight, but the dashboard and salon bulkhead aren’t.

Everything is so complicated these days…

OEM door frame is stained and coated with ICA base coat clear

Back-side of the door frame gets sanded with 36 grit

Attachment point on the bulkhead also gets the 36 grit treatment

Wetted out with epoxy, then coated with wood flour-thickened epoxy

More wood flour-thickened epoxy on the bulkhead

I’ll stain the bungs then hit them with ICA base coat later, before topcoating

OEM door is stained and coated with ICA base coat then ICA satin topcoat

Need to knock some ICA off where the hinges mount

Ready for hinges!

I’ve got a salon door!

First time since 2008

Now for the trouble…

Door-to-frame gap grows from bottom to top

With the hinges attached to the original screw holes, the door is aligned with the hinge-side bulkhead. But on the door knob side, the gap between the door and the frame grows from 1/16″ at the bottom of the door opening to 3/8″ at the top. Which means the bulkhead on this side leans forward. Which would be consistent with the messed up salon ceiling frames in this area, where they dropped as much as 1/2″ from the original position as a result of something really heavy falling on the cabin top/dashboard.

New mahogany hatch panel gaps show the dashboard down ~3/8″

See how the right-side corner of the hatch panel touches the mahogany it’s supposed to rest on but there’s a gap on the left? Then from the left corner, the gap gets smaller as it goes toward the other, off-camera corner. That pattern repeats on the aft hatch panel here, too. What’s causing that is that the entire dashboard/cabin top structure is low here. But on the opposite side of the dashboard hatch opening, there’s no gap. That side–the side the camera was on–isn’t low. So the hatch opening isn’t on the same plane all the way around. But the hatch panels are flat.

There’s no easy fix here. The entire dashboard/cabin top structure is low just outboard of center on the port side because something heavy dropped on it. I can’t make twisted hatch panels to match the dashboard. Adding mahogany to flatten out the pieces the hatches close up against could make that part on the same plane, but then the hatches would stand proud of the dashboard on that side while they’d be flush on the outboard side. The proper fix would have been to cut off the fiberglass and plywood dashboard back when we were making the cabin top bullet-proof, disassemble the frames, and rebuild everything where it was when it left the factory. It’s too late for that now. So…what I’m going to do is average out the gaps. I’ll attach the door hinges in different spots so the gap is consistent all the way around. On the hatch panels, I’m just going to have to live with them not being consistently flush with the dashboard from side to side. Once everything is assembled and done, nobody’ll notice. Anybody that does…I’ll kick ’em off the boat! LOL

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fitting the Salon Entry Folding Hatch

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Aft Stateroom Transom Panel

With the V-berth moldings and transom mahogany panel varnished, next I installed the transom panel.

Cutting an access panel in the back wall

The transom navigation light connections shouldn’t need maintenance, but I’d rather have an access hatch built-in than having to make one later on after it’s all assembled. This little Master Mind 3″ plunge saw is great for these kinds of tasks.

Next, I cut Buffalo Batt non-woven fabric insulation to fit

I’m using Buffalo Batt on the backside of all panels that face the hull. It provides R3 insulation value, and even without AC on the boat it makes a HUGE difference in how quickly the interior heats up in summer. With a blanket over the salon entryway and all of the windows closed, by noon it’s 20°F cooler inside compared to the aft deck. Eventually the heat works its way inside, but the difference the insulated panels make has allowed me to put in longer days during this scorching hot summer.

Epoxy the backside of the panel, lay on the insulation, and press it into place

Next day, put moldings on the transom light access hatch

That’s a lot of clamps for a tiny little hatch

That turned out nice!

The moldings don’t just cover the plywood edge, they also cover the joint, sealing it up to keep heated or cooled air on the inside and outside air where it belongs.

Time to glue things up using US Composites epoxy resin and 2:1 hardener

Behind the dryer box, you can see the back panel is installed

Looks good!

Once this base coat gets sanded and the whole area gets sprayed with the top coat, it’ll look even better,

Transom light access hatch

Ready for the ceiling panel

First, apply epoxy to the contact surfaces

Push sticks, clamps, and backing blocks hold the ceiling panel in place

I use shrink wrap tape as the backing blocks when clamping things in place. That way, if I miss any epoxy residue, it will contact the plastic tape instead of wood. Since epoxy doesn’t stick to that type of plastic, the blocks pop right off when the push sticks and clamps are removed, even if there was sticky epoxy.

That’s a wrap for today

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Aft Stateroom Transom Panel

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Mahogany Veneer on the Aft Stateroom Hatch Hole

The Whisper Wall headliner installer didn’t show up last weekend, but there’s plenty of other stuff for me to do to get the headliner installed. Like cranking out that beautiful mahogany aft stateroom hatch trim ring. But I can’t leave the hatch hole in nasty OEM white paint. And repainting it doesn’t seem right either. So…I figure I’ll use some mahogany veneer to make it pretty.

I’ve got two boxes of veneer in stock–one is rotary cut and pretty red, the other is quartersawn (ribbon stripe) and more brown. I think the rotary cut red will do the trick.

I had a couple of scrap ribbonstripe veneers that might have done it

The wood back in the aft stateroom has red hues. In the V-berth, it’s brown ribbonstripe. I also don’t want two seams in the veneer, since that doubles the chances of seam failure. This is a hatch, after all, and on nice days it’ll be open, and summer squalls can pop up quickly and get things wet. The fewer seams, the better.

4′ x 8′ rotary cut red mahogany veneer has been sitting in a closet for years

I’ll use contact cement in this application, not epoxy

The OEM paint is in surprisingly good condition…just needed a good sanding

Water never got in here and neither did much sunlight. So the OEM paint isn’t checked or otherwise distressed.

Veneer backing soaks up contact cement

Two coats of contact cement on the hatch hole

Et voila!

This was scary. If you’re doing it right, contact cement locks in tight on contact. Because I’m putting veneer on the inside of a tube, it had to be lined up just so at the beginning and maintained all the way around. If I was off a fraction of an inch in alignment at the start, it’d be a mile off four feet later. I got lucky! In retrospect, I should have cut the panel an inch or so wider. There would have been more waste, but I wouldn’t have had to be so precise with the alignment.

I used a razor knife to trim the excess veneer from the tube top and bottom, then slid the new trim ring up to see how it looks.

That’s going to look fabulous with the headliner installed

The veneer is trimmed and sanded with 240 grit Mirka Abranet

Time to break out that stinky ICA base coat clear varnish.

Three coats later…this turned out super nice!

The ICA added so much material to the inside diameter that the trim ring no longer fits easily. No problem, I’ll sand the OD of the trim ring down a bit when I do the final install, after the headliner is installed.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Mahogany Trim Ring for the V-berth Hatch

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: ICA Base Coat on the V-berth/Galley Bulkhead

The headliner tracks are getting installed, so I needed to get the last bare mahogany veneers on the V-berth/galley bulkhead varnished with ICA polyurethane base coat. If I’m doing the V-berth side, I might as well do the galley at the same time.

The mahogany veneer looks pretty good

It’s been protected with cardboard since I installed it back in December 2017. How time flies…

This part is mostly inside the galley cabinet

The big wall will mostly be covered by upper and lower galley cabinets

I used Mirka Abranet in 240 grit to prep the panels

The V-berth side of the bulkhead will get varnished, too

Once I’d sanded everything with 240, I blew dust out of the wood grain, vacuumed the area, wiped everything down with alcohol and a microfiber cloth, then got to mixing the ICA.

ICA 272 base coat, 1015 reducer, and 266 catalyst

This was a horrible mistake

DO NOT BUY 6001CN organic respirator filters!!!

I thought I was getting a good deal on some respirator filters advertised on ebay. They were listed as 6001, but it turns out they were the Chinese version. The 6001 filters I had on my respirator had been used and were long past their expiration date. But when I put on the respirator with the new 6001CN filters, a strange smell came through…and it was coming from the filters. I hadn’t mixed the ICA yet, and the salon didn’t have any chemical odors. These filters come from the factory smelling like chemicals. So I threw them out and used the old ones. Even though they were old, no smell came through. So…lesson learned. Only buy genuine 3m 6001 filters.

Three coats later…

I rolled and tipped it, but it was hot in the tent and I was working solo so it’s not as smooth as I’d like. But since it’s only the first base coat, that’s fine.

The V-berth looks good, too

It was hot enough in the tent that the base coat was dry to the touch within five minutes or so. With three coats laid down, I left the stinky boat and went home.

Next day, sand again with Abranet 240

Abranet is a great product. Since it’s net instead of paper, the vacuum pulls almost all of the dust through. There’s very little flying dust or residue.

Ready for three more coats

This is a very different grain than the rest of the V-berth

Sanded, vacuumed, wiped down, and ready for more ICA

6 coats total

Looks good!

That’s a wrap

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The V-berth Headliner Install Begins