1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Aft Stateroom Center Fascia Board

With the aft stateroom starboard fascia board and the port side fascia done, next I made the center fascia. Chris Craft originally used three separate boards across the aft end of the stateroom, with lousy joinery between them. And they were painted white, of course, even though they were made of pretty mahogany. I’m going a different route: I’ll use one long board and eventually clear coat it with ICA two-part polyurethane clear.

Chris Craft loved that white paint over mahogany

It’s been Fair for the last ten years

OEM stamp on the backside

The old boards on the new one

For a while there, I was considering reusing the old boards. So I ran them through my Dewalt planer until they were down to pretty mahogany. But since they’ve got screw holes in them and the original center board is long gone, I decided to use the old boards as patterns on either end of one long board I’ll make.

First I clamped them to establish the length of the new board

Then I clamped a 6-foot ruler to both boards and traced the arc between them

Once I’d traced the whole thing, I got ready to cut.

I always get nervous before making cuts on big pieces of lumber

Looks good so far

After cutting about halfway, I put sticks under the cut end to keep the unsupported wood from sagging.

Just about there

Nailed it on the first try!

Starboard fascia board fits perfectly!

That looks great!

Back out to the salon to round off the lower edge

Looking good

Next, I cut plywood panels that the Whisper Wall headliner tracks will attach to.

I saved this solid piece of original 3/4″ plywood for 10 years

There’s always that question of whether to throw out a piece of scrap plywood or keep it. During the demolition phase of the refit, there were lots of pieces of plywood that I put in a ‘keep’ pile. This one was big enough and in great shape, so I knew it would come in handy one day.

Next, I used my Kreg jig to drill pocket screw holes

The original headliner cleats are too narrow for the Whisper Wall track

I traced the curve of the original headliner cleats with a Sharpie

All the way to the starboard side

Then I removed the OEM cleats

For the last step, I glued and screwed the new headliner track attachment panels in place

Done!

The fascia boards are off to the paint shop. I’ll have them sprayed with eight coats of ICA base coat and two coats of top coat. They should be ready to install in a few days.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Gorgeous Aft Stateroom Fascia Boards

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Aft Stateroom Port Fascia Board

With the aft stateroom starboard fascia board fitted, next I got the port side done.

Pretty mahogany board, resawn, jointed, and ready to become a fascia

Nasty original facia will make a nice pattern

The old fascia is ~1/4″ shy of fitting up to the new wall on the bottom

In the pic above, I’m holding a piece of the Whisper Wall perimeter track up to show how it’ll eventually be installed.

Need to add some material to fill gaps in a few spots

This board is going to look great once it’s varnished

Truing the lower edge

Rounding the lower edge

I traced the pattern and got ready to cut

Just like that!

Another fascia board done

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Aft Stateroom Center Fascia Board

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Aft Stateroom Starboard Fascia Board

I’ve been juggling even more things than usual recently, and I was remiss in posting articles this week not out of laziness but because I left the camera on the boat. Whata ya gonna do? It’s a 50 mile round-trip at the very least to retrieve the camera, and it’s not like I’m being lavishly compensated for my efforts (thank you from the bottom of my heart who have hit the tip jar) for Anyway, in my last post I took some big mahogany moldings I’d had stacked below the boat to a local wood shop and resawed them down to 5/8″ boards, which I then ran through my jointer and knocked them down to 1/2″. Next I took the original starboard-side Chris Craft fascia board and used it as a pattern on one of my pretty new boards. The results turned out quite nice.

The original fascia panel on a new board

The old fascia board was painted ugly white and didn’t fit well to the new mahogany walls

I considered running it through the thickness planer to knock the white paint off, because it’s pretty mahogany underneath. But the fit was not good enough, so I used it as a pattern instead.

It fits fairly well everywhere else, so it’ll make a fine pattern

Scribing off the pattern onto the new board

EurekaZone tracksaw tracks make long cuts truing the board super easy

This board needs to be cut with decreasing width from leading to following edge because the aft deck is canted so any water that comes in will run aft…the fascia board gets skinnier as it runs aft.

Round the edge with my router

Scribe the other side and get ready to cut

Need to add some material on this end to fill a gap

Looking good!

Mahogany porn

This is going to be really beautiful once it’s varnished. I wonder why Chris Craft painted them all white?

Looks good!

Better fit on the leading edge

I use a hand plane to knock off a bit of excess that’s causing a gap

That’s more like it

I’ve been pondering access hatches for the fuel fills on either side

Not that I think I’ll ever have to see these again once the cabinetry’s done back here, but the next poor sucker that owns this boat will probably appreciate having access to those fuel fill hose clamps that doesn’t involve a chainsaw.

Maybe I’ve been overthinking this…

Yup…I was definitely overthinking it

That’ll definitely work

I can just use 19mm mahogany plywood and cut a rectangular hole there. I’ve already got a stash of hatch moldings made, varnished, and ready to cut to fit. All I’ll have to do is make a little corner molding to cover the open plywood end. Easy peasy.

It’s funny…a decade ago, I’d never made cabinet moldings. I didn’t have the tools. If you asked me to make one, I might have had an inkling for how to proceed, but I probably would have told you to go find a pro. If I tried to do it myself, it probably wouldn’t have ended nicely. But now…easy peasy. That’s funny.

That’s the thing about this refit. It’s completely bananas, economically. I mean, a new 46′ twin Cummins turbodiesel boat would cost a pretty penny, but this is an old Chris Craft. I’m into it many times over what they sell for these days. Then again, this isn’t just any old Chris Craft. This little fascia board I made, which I’ll finish in ICA two-part polyurethane, is one of many upgrades over the original white primer and painted mahogany that Chris Craft did back in the day. It’ll look a lot nicer than the original (to the missus and me, anyway). but still….this refit is still economically nuts.

On the other hand, this refit is also a wonderful burden. And I think people–human beings–we need burdens. A soft life makes a soft mind and body. My 9-to-5 job is intellectually engaging, but there’s no craft to it. I’m constantly learning new things in my job, but they’re all the same kind of thing. With this Roamer project, I learned to TIG weld, ferchrissakes…stainless or aluminum! And the thought of making cabinets went from ‘let’s see if we can find a reputable professional’ a decade ago to ‘easy peasy’ today.

This refit is both bananas and a terrific burden…and I’d argue that maybe it’s more the latter than the former. I’d love to see comments from people who have  projects that make zero sense economically, but the craft or physical, intellectual…maybe even spiritual…benefits make it well worth the investment. And how do you explain to others about the benefits of your terrific burden?

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Aft Stateroom Port Fascia Board

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Resawing Big Mahogany Boards

I’ve been working for a while now on the next step in the process of spraying the ICA top coat clear in the interior: installing the headliner. I know…it makes no sense, but it is what it is. I’ve got all of the support panels installed around the aft stateroom that the Whisper Wall tracks will attach to. The last thing I need to do is make and install some mahogany fascia panels that go above the aft stateroom portholes. Chris Craft used mahogany boards, too, but they painted them white. And the primer they used goes so deep into the wood that I can’t remove it all without removing enough material to make a 1/2″ thick board 3/8″, which would not be a very robust fascia board. So I’m going to make new fascia panels. I’ve had some big mahogany boards sitting in the stack for ten years, and I knew someday they’d come in handy. Today’s the day!

The smaller mahogany stash

I’ve got an 8/4 rough cut board stash under the boat. I put the thinner, 4/4 and 5/4 finer cut boards under the stairs and scaffolding at the back of the boat.

Going to the big woodshop nearby

These boards are leftover moldings from a golf club contractor job that I bought off craigslist a decade ago. They’re 1-1/8″ thick, and I need to have them resawn down to 5/8″. After I send them through my jointer, the final thickness should be 1/2″, which is the size I need for the new fascia panels.

Awaiting the big saw

I wish my own woodshop was this big!

Going through the resaw machine

Sorry for the fuzzy pic, but my phone was all I had on me. This big resaw machine has a power feed table. It split this 12-foot board in about five seconds.

Resawn mahogany boards back at the boatyard

I’m sure the leftover molding planks will come in handy somewhere…but that’s for another day.

Old fascia panel on a new board

You can see that stripper left a lot of white primer deep in the grain

Unlike Chris Craft, I don’t intend to have white fascia panels. Clear coated mahogany ones should look much better.

The backside of the original fascia shows pretty, unpainted grain

I don’t know what Chris Craft was thinking, painting that white!

Back at my own tiny wood shop

These are big boards that need to be jointed. I’ve got a big MiniMax FS35 jointer that can handle 14″ wide boards, but these ones are too long for my shop!

First, I had to make in-feed and out-feed tables in the same plane as the jointer

Finally! Jointing the boards!

I’ve never messed with boards this long. To keep constant pressure on the boards as they pass over the jointer cutter head, I used cork sheets to create friction and a long push stick. It ended up working pretty well. The boards are jointed and ready to go back to the Roamer, where I’ll finish turning them into fascia boards.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Aft Center Fascia Board