1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Entryway Door Jamb

I’d like for my top priority to be splashing the boat and getting the bottom wet. This project would finish a lot faster if it was closer to my home port. But my Boatamalan* painter lives in Annapolis, and until his job is completely done I need to keep it closer to him. I decided years ago to use ICA catalyzed polyurethane varnish for the interior because that’s what they used at the Boatamalan’s former day job, Weaver Boatworks. I figure if it’s good enough for multi-million dollar sportfishermen toys for the top 1%, it’s good enough for a weekend warrior boat nog** like me.

* Boatamalan: portmanteau indicating highly skilled boat workers of Central American origin. They’re actually from Honduras, but Boatamalan rolls off the tongue better. 🙂

** Boat nog: A local term I picked up at a southern Maryland boatyard meaning “guy who spends every weekend working on a hopeless boat that’ll never see the water again.”

Thing is, ICA is a base coat/top coat system, and the top coat is a spray-only product. You can roll and tip it, but word has it the results are disastrous. When sprayed though….absolutely gorgeous.

So…the boat has to stay in the current marina until the ICA top coat I’ve already purchased has been sprayed. But before the Boatamalan can spray it, the headliner has to be installed. It seems backward, but as I understand it the topcoat is applied last to avoid it getting scratched when the headliner is installed. The V-berth headliner installation is started and looking great, and a few of the Whisper Wall headliner panels have been installed in the aft stateroom, too. But before the rest of the headliner can be installed in the aft stateroom, the aft stateroom head slider door box has to be finished. The bigger job, though, is squaring away the aft stateroom entryway.

Right side door jamb is a hot mess

We removed that door jamb part way back when we were doing demolition in December 2007. It’s been sitting in a pile of parts in my garage since then because I knew I’d need it as a pattern some day.

Man…was I an idiot. lol

A previous owner was very concerned with security

That cutout was for padlock hardware. Like…barn door padlock hardware. Galvanized steel. Very ‘work boat’ feel to it.

A bigger hot mess

Mr. Good-but-Slow strikes again!

Mr. Good-but-Slow was a guy who had very good customer reviews, but pretty much everything he did on my boat was a disaster. I had to replace the bulkhead on this side because it rotted out from water coming in through the teak deck-to-aluminum deck joint. There’s a major mahogany beam overhead here that had rotted out and then split from taking the load that the rotted out plywood bulkhead was no longer holding in place. Mr. Good-but-Slow did an OK job scarfing in a new section of beam, but he didn’t jack it up to the right height (~1/8″) before epoxying it in place. When I cut the bulkhead, I used the original as a pattern. When I installed it, I jacked the beam up to the OEM height, epoxied all of the joint surfaces, slid the bulkhead home and screwed it all in place. But because Mr. Good-but-Slow had epoxy-locked the beam in place in the ‘rotted bulkhead’ position, when I put the bulkhead in it was too tall. I didn’t notice because I was using a hydraulic jack to put the beam in place and everything seemed to fit just fine.

Fast forward to 2019 and I’m working on the aft stateroom doorjamb and that’s when I realized the bulkhead panel had been installed in compression. The panel, which should be flat, is instead curved. This is a problem because the door, the jamb, and everything else here will not be curved.

It’s always something…

So, I need to make a straight door jamb that fits a slightly curved bulkhead. No problem.

That’s ugly

Chris Craft and their freakin’ white painted mahogany

The least-horrible view

8/4 mahogany scrap left over from the toe rail

There’s always that question of whether or not to keep scraps. It turned out this one was a good keeper.

One pass down the table saw rough-cuts the height

I see potential here

Dewalt miter saw lops off the sharp ends

This is working out well so far

Run the lumber over my MiniMax 35 jointer back at the house

After jointing all four sides, I rounded the face edges with a router

Back at the boat, with each additional cut I get more nervous

It’s a funny thing: the first cut or two on a piece of nice lumber aren’t stressful at all. But as each piece of wood gets closer to its final form, I get more and more nervous about the next cut. I’ve spent a full day before machining a single piece of wood. On that last cut, if you blow it, that’s a whole day’s work gone. So far, things are going well.

First rabbet cut

Second rabbet cut

3rd rabbet cut

That’s not bad!

This is terrifying

Not bad!

Shopsmith bandsaw is a great tool

One final cut and the piece is rough cut

Next, I used a router to cut the curve in the outer rabbet to fit the curve in the bulkhead panel. That won’t be visible because the bulkhead is behind the salon entry stairs. The door jamb rabbet on the other side is straight, so it’ll align nicely with the lower door jamb. This was irritating, but overall it didn’t add much time to making the part. Where things get more time consuming is the next step.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Entryway Mahogany Panels

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making V-berth Head Moldings

The scorching hot summer of 2016 is gradually coming to an end. But it seems as if every break in the heat happens in mid-week. By the weekend, it’s back up way above the average for this time of year. On the upside, it’s been good to get out of the tent and enjoy my other Chris Craft. On the downside, the V-berth head was supposed to be done by May 1…I’ve fallen far off schedule. But in between the heat and the boating, I did manage to finally get the moldings for the head made.

1968 Chris Craft Commander 42 anchored at Three Sisters on the upper Potomac river

The water is very nice up at Three Sisters. In the pic above, that’s the Washington Monument off in the distance on 9/11/16. Meanwhile, back in the tent…

I need to make mahogany moldings for the door and cabinet openings

First, round a corner with the router

Next, cut a rabbet with the table saw

Next, cut the molding off from the board and repeat

And repeat…

And repeat

And keep repeating until there’s no more stock to hold onto

Run the last one through the Shopsmith bandsaw, which has a thinner kerf than the table saw

Cabinet opening moldings are done

Convert the Shopsmith into a shaper for the door moldings

Custom in-feed & out-feed tables are ready for action

That turned out pretty slick!

Flip the board, and do it again

Cut the rabbet on my $40 new-to-me Craftsman table saw

One pass to cut the rabbet, and another to rip off the molding

Door moldings are done and ready for sanding and finishing

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Sanding and Finishing the V-berth Head Moldings

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Expanding the Woodworking Shop

It’s been so brutally hot and humid that I’ve pretty much taken the month off from the project. The Labor Day weekend was nice — not too hot and surprisingly low humidity — so we took our other boat out for the weekend. Then the heat and humidity came back with a vengeance. We’re almost halfway through September, and it’ll be in the high 90s and dripping wet this weekend. It looks like this will be the last miserable weekend of the year though, so I hope to get back into it starting next week. Frankly, it’s been kind of nice taking the time off. I was starting to get burned out.

That said, I did get the wood shop set up to process moldings faster.

New-to-me Craftsman contractor’s table saw

The new saw was a craigslist find. It had been sitting in a guy’s shed for 10 years or so. He bought it from the original owner, who didn’t use it very much, but the second owner never fully assembled it. He’d replaced the belt, but never aligned the pulley properly. Almost all of the pieces were there, but it was missing some of the anti-kickback brackets. There was also quite a bit of surface rust on the table. Oddly enough, the seller even had the owner’s manual, which includes all of the assembly and adjustment instructions. I ended up paying $40 for it…what a score!

I assembled it, replaced the blade, adjusted the belt, and made a sort of outfeed extension with a board so I can cut the long pieces of molding I need for the V-berth head door. I also need to make infeed and outfeed extensions for my Shopsmith, which I’ll use as a shaper/router.

The board that will become the infeed extension for my Shopsmith

Shopsmith in router configuration to cut a rabbet

The Shopsmith is a great machine, but one problem I’ve been having with it is that unlike typical table saws, where the blade is adjustable for height and angled cuts, on the Shopsmith the table is what’s adjustable. For small projects that’s fine, but for some of these moldings I need to make between four and eight passes. Since the moldings are long and the Shopsmith table is fairly small, I need infeed and outfeed extensions to ensure a consistent height along the entire length. It’s easy enough to change the height of the table, but re-setting the boards I’ve used as infeed and outfeed extensions takes 10~15 minutes each time. Getting them to line up with the table and be level all the way from end to end is a pain. Going back and forth from the table saw configuration to router/shaper takes additional time. This was the main driver in my decision to start looking for a conventional table saw. For routing and shaping, I’ll set the Shopsmith up once and run all the pieces of molding through. That $40 investment in the saw, plus a day spent assembling, cleaning, and adjusting it will be well worth it.

1/4″ rabbet  for an aluminum bracket

Aluminum angle will latch onto the Shopsmith table

I cut the rabbet for the full depth of the aluminum angle on both the infeed and outfeed extension, but then realized it would be better if the aluminum angle for the outfeed extension hooked onto the track for the saw fence. That’ll make it much easier to align the extensions when I change the table height.

An idea that didn’t work out well

Having the aluminum slide in the table saw fence track makes a much better connection than trying to clamp it to the table horizontally. I was going to TIG weld the aluminum bar to the angle for a nice fit. But the aluminum angle isn’t long enough to have a rigid connection to the board with the bar welded to it. There’s only a 1/2″ or so leftover for the board. So instead I used the same basic idea but without the additional bar.

Space the angle just far enough away from the board, then screw it all together

With the outfeed extension made, it was a breeze to make the infeed one.

Route out holes on the underside for clamps

Drill and countersink holes, and then screw it all together

Et voila!

I use scrap 2x4s and clamps to hold the far end of the infeed and outfeed extensions to match the height of the table. The scaffolding framing provides plenty of places to clamp the crossbar supports. With this setup, it takes about 5 minutes to set the table for different routing/shaping operations. And I can run 8′ or longer pieces of lumber through without any trouble at all. Now I’m ready to make moldings. If only it wasn’t so danged hot and sticky this weekend!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making V-berth Head Moldings