1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Entryway Mahogany Panels II

Making the aft stateroom doorway to the salon pretty has been a real challenge, but it’s coming along well. I got the smaller panels installed already, and it’s looking lots better. But getting the bigger panel installed required making the curved bulkhead flat first. Then, the seriously ugly overhead beam posed another challenge. But I got ‘er done.

Flattening the curve

That’s a bunch of 1/4″ and 1/8″ scrap plywood and epoxy thickened with wood flour filling the hollow space where the bulkhead had a bit of a curve. Then I hit the whole thing with an 8″ Makita sander, using a 6-foot straight edge to make sure everything is where it should be. Next step: install the pretty mahogany plywood.

That’s a lot of wood flour-thickened epoxy

The bulkhead isn’t perfectly straight, but wetted out with US Composites 635 epoxy, then topped with wood flour-thickened epoxy will fill imperfections and permanently bond the 1/4″ mahogany plywood to the bulkhead. If water ever gets in here and rots out the wood, the epoxy bulkhead will still be standing!

The ugly lower bulkhead looks better topped with wood flour-thickened epoxy

I could leave it just like it is, and it’d look better than what I started with! On second thought…nah, let’s make it pretty.

Back-side of the mahogany panel wetted out with US Composites 635

Clamps and push sticks and scrap shrink wrap, oh my!

If you look closely, you’ll see push sticks down low that are pushing up against 3/4″ push pads(? AKA scraps of 3/4″ plywood covered with shrink wrap tape, which epoxy can’t stick to), with other push sticks used to keep the pad from moving. Every weekend is a practical lab session testing Newton’s 1st Law, and he was right! Without opposing push sticks exerting equal and opposing force, everything collapses in a heap. Don’t ask how I know!

Gotta cover up that ugly line of headliner staple holes and white paint at the top

The answer to the perpetual question is: save those scraps!!!

This doorway needed four panels to cover all of the ugliness going on, including a little piece at the top. I saved a piece of 1/4″ ribbon stripe mahogany scrap from the V-berth, which I had the Boatamalan painter base coat with ICA polyurethane in a spray booth. This little piece was a scrap I saved, thinking it might come in handy some day. It did!

It’s a different grain, but it’ll look fine

Wet out the little panel with left over epoxy

More clamps to hold the little panel in place

Go home, come back next day

That’s looking pretty good!

Except for this block of ugliness

The block of ugliness is part of the big beam that crosses the top of the aft bulkhead and supports the aft deck. It’s structural, so I can’t remove it. But a bit of veneer could maybe make it less ugly.

Something like this veneer scrap might work

The cut edge of the beam is Peak Ugly

That’s better

Next, I applied contact cement to all of the surfaces and applied the veneer

Two down, one to go

That’s much better!

Not bad, considering what I started with!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Touch on the Aft Head Sliding Door Box

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