1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: V-berth Cabinetry Storage Boxes

Summer has officially arrived, but for more than a month it’s been miserable in the tent. When it’s a beautiful day outside, it’s hellishly hot and humid in that plastic bubble. Using fans helps how I feel, but epoxy has a very short pot life even when I use the slowest hardener. It’s very frustrating. That said, I’m still making progress in the V-berth.

Time to install the bed foundation

Glued and screwed gussets

Mark the cabinet cut lines and rabbets in the big bed foundation panel

I use aluminum angle to guide the router

The track saw extrusions work well as a router guide, too

I use this handy little plunge saw with only 1/16″ kerf to cut the cabinet opening

Then I finish the corners with a jigsaw

This will make a nice cabinet door

Cut the last rabbets on the back-side of the foundation panel

The panel is ready for installation

But first, I’m going to make the cabinet box and attach it to the panel. I considered doing it after I installed the panel, but I think it’ll be easier if the box is installed first.

The back of the cabinet box

Trimmed here and there to clear the hull framing

After cutting the rest of the cabinet box panels, I took them home and varnished them. I’ve got a bunch of cans of Varathane, lacquer, Minwax polyurethane and Helmsman Spar Varnish I’d like to use up. The inside of these cabinets is a good place for it.

3 coats of Minwax Helmsman Spar Varnish looks pretty good

Dry fit…looks pretty good!

Dry-fit the box…we’re ready for epoxy

Glued and clamped together

The hot temps in the tent make it challenging to glue the box together. The epoxy kicks really fast. First I wet out the rabbets and the matching panel edges with straight epoxy, then I add wood flour to the epoxy and apply it over the wetted out areas. Next, I fit the pieces together and clamp until I get some of the thickened epoxy squeezing out of the joint. Then I wipe down the joint with alcohol to remove any excess epoxy, and it’s on to the next piece until it’s all assembled.

Next day, epoxy the joints and mate the box to the panel

Support the ends of the panel and weigh down the middle

I have one more box to make, then I’ll insulate everything and install the cabinets.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: More V-berth Cabinetry Storage Boxes

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: More V-berth Cabinetry

Things are moving along in the V-berth, though not as fast as I’d like. In other words, it’s about the same as since I first started this project!

 

The panels fit nicely

Next, I need to prepare them for installation.

With the panel square to the floor…

…it’s not square to the wall!

The V-berth bathroom wall was cut, fitted, and installed by a clown of a contractor who was working for me a few years ago. Since he didn’t install the wall with the leading edge perpendicular to the floor, everything that attaches to it is off. And that means it takes more work to make things not look too goofy. I’ll eventually put a piece of veneer here, but it would have been nice to have the panel installed right from the start.

Mahogany 1″ x 1″ cleats will back up each joint.

The vertical cleat used to be part of the original mahogany toe rails that I recycled.

All framed out

Looking good!

Bed base panel is level but too tall

Normally, you wouldn’t use a level on a boat. But I’ve leveled the boat by adjusting the boat stands with a 4′ level on the floor. I recheck it every few months to make sure it hasn’t settled and thrown off the level.

Knocking the top off of the panel

Bed base gussets tie all the panels together

Remove the panels and cut the insulation

Wetted out and edge sealed with epoxy, then insulation is pressed in place

The marked off area and the bottom edges will get epoxy sealed

Floor cleats are glued and screwed in place

With sticky epoxy everywhere and super high temps in the tent, I called it a wrap.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: V-berth Cabinetry Storage Boxes

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fitting the V-berth Cabinets

With the V-berth walls finally installed, the rest of the cabinetry in the room is coming together pretty quickly.

The aft deck plywood pile shrinks a bit more

Mahogany panels are pre-finished with ICA base and top coat

I had these panels painted with ICA a year or two (or three?) ago. They’ve been awaiting installation for too long.

Bed base panel fits well

The salon plywood stack gets one sheet shorter

The mahogany plywood stack in the salon is my official progress meter. The shorter the stack gets, the closer I am to finishing the refit. I’m very pleased when it gets shorter. Hopefully, that’ll happen at a faster rate from now on.

EZ-One track saw table makes it easy to break down 4×8 sheets

With the EZ-One track saw system, it’s the saw that moves, not the panel. So unlike a conventional table saw, you don’t need a huge amount of space. The track also ensures perfectly straight cuts exactly where you want them. You don’t have to worry about keeping the panel tight up against a fence or kickbacks. It’s a great tool for this kind of work.

Angled cuts are also super easy with the EZ-One

Not a bad fit…needs a bit of trimming

A snip here, a slice there…

Nice and square!

Three panels fit nicely

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: More V-berth Cabinetry.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Starboard V-berth Mahogany Wall Panel

With the port side V-berth wall panel installed, doing the Starboard side was relatively easy. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I had to use my phone to take most of these pictures. Even with much higher resolution, the phone camera pictures always end up grainier and fuzzier than my old Fujifilm digital camera.

Good fit!

I”m using three clamps to hold the panel in place, but two of those just support it vertically. Only one clamp–the one at the porthole opening–is actually clamping the panel to the boat. And that’s all it takes to get good contact along the leading edge, where it meets the forward bulkhead.

Add another cleat to support the back edge

Final fit checks out…time to cut the porthole opening

Marked from the outside and ready to cut

Not a bad fit

The panel is flush with the porthole opening at the top, but it’s proud of the opening at the bottom. This creates a situation where the porthole potentially won’t have a good seal. It’s supposed to meet up flush with the aluminum porthole opening. Instead, I’ll have to rely on sealant and an epoxy saturated panel edge to keep water from ever coming through here.

The problem: poor fit from Chris Craft

The plywood backing panels aren’t square to the porthole opening. Instead, they’re angled to (sort of) meet up with the hull ribs. It looks like the carpenters at Chris Craft tried to compensate for a poor porthole install. If the welder had done a better job squaring up the 6″ pipe they use for these porthole openings, it would have made things a lot better and easier for everyone.

Remove even more aluminum rib material below the porthole

I’ve removed about 3/8″ of rib depth just below the porthole opening to smooth out the transition from the porthole opening plywood surrounds to the mahogany cleat attached to the rib. With that much material removed, I’m finally getting good contact between the new mahogany panel and the original porthole plywood surround. But, in retrospect, the best approach would have been to  cut out the porthole opening back when the hull was sandblasted and reposition it. My hindsight remains absolutely perfect!!

Rib contact points are marked

Time for insulation

That Buffalo Batt material is very nice to work with. Once I had the insulation fitted, I removed it and wetted out the back of the panel with epoxy, then reinstalled the insulation and pressed it to the panel with scraps of plywood. The next day, it was ready to install.

Ready for installation

I wetted out the edges and contact points with epoxy

All of the mahogany cleats get saturated with epoxy, too

Epoxy thickened with wood flour and cabosil in a 7:3 ratio makes strong glue

Screws around the porthole hold everything in place

Remove the epoxy that squeezes out with alcohol on a rag

Next day, time for the clamps to come off!

Nice!

With the curved walls finally done, I can finally get going on the cabinetry.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fitting the V-berth Cabinets

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Port V-berth Mahogany Wall Panel

With the V-berth mahogany panels clear coated and insulated, the next step is installation.

Base coated, insulated, and edge sealed

Edges fully wetted out with epoxy

Mahogany cleats get wetted out with epoxy, too

Epoxy thickened with wood flour goes on next

Once the thickened epoxy gets applied to all contact surfaces, everything is a sticky mess and no pictures can be taken. Once the panel is positioned, clamped, and secured with fasteners, I wipe up the sticky mess with alcohol on rags…lots and lots of rags. The secret is not to smear the stuff around. Get some epoxy on the rag, fold it over, get more on, fold again, and when there’s no more clean parts of the rag, throw it out and get a new one. I keep wiping and wiping until all of the sticky residue is gone, which I confirm by holding a flashlight at an angle to the panel. I check and re-check with the flashlight about a half-dozen times, because sometimes more epoxy oozes out and other sticky bits just get missed. Finally, once it’s all wiped up, off come the gloves and it’s time to call it a day.

Glued, screwed, and clamped

In the forward-most upper corner, I had to use two sticks as a lever to push the panel into place. There’s no way to get a clamp or screws in there, but with plenty of epoxy on the backside it’ll be nice and solid by tomorrow.

Give me a long enough lever, and I can make a stubborn plywood panel conform to a complex curve!

Very nice fit on the back edge–no clamps or screws required

The panel is clamped, glued, and screwed at the porthole opening

The panel orientation at the porthole opening is critical, since misalignment can throw off the fit of the porthole itself. The original porthole installer at Chris Craft did a poor job aligning it. The porthole was inset quite a ways from the frames, so I had to do a lot of grinding when I was preparing to fit the panels to bring the frame in close enough for the plywood panel to conform. With lots of screws and the clamp, it looks like this will work out well.

Keen-eyed observers will note what appears to be (and, in fact, is) an upside-down run in the pic above. These panels only got the first of four coats of ICA base clear applied, and the painter lays it on heavy. We do that because epoxy can be wiped off of finished wood, but it soaks into unfinished wood and discolors it. We’ll sand the whole V-berth, eliminating all the runs and surface imperfections, then hit it with another four coats of base, then sand again before applying two coats of semi-matte topcoat.

Next day, the clamps come off

I know, I know…the veneers don’t line up between the two panels. You know what? I don’t care! 🙂

Not a bad joint

I think I’ll use 1/4 round mahogany trim to cover the joint and bungs

Behind the panel it’s very nicely insulated

That’s a wrap for the port side V-berth panel.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: My Life WAS An Old-School Country Western Song

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Insulating Mahogany Wall Panels

With the stack of mahogany wall panels finally painted with eight coats of ICA base clear then topped with two coats of semi-matte, the next step involves insulating the back-side of each panel. The hull, decks, and cabin top are already insulated with spray foam, but I’m also using Buffalo Batts to insulate the back of each wall panel that faces the hull to make the boat more comfortable all year-round. Insulating each panel adds a lot of time to the process, but I think it’ll be worth it.

1.5″ thick Buffalo Batt provides R3 insulation value

Cut out areas where the panel contacts frames and mahogany cleats

Wet out the panel with epoxy

The epoxy serves two purposes: it seals the panel, giving it stability over time, and it acts like contact cement to hold the insulation in place and tight to the panel. I kept the epoxy away from the areas where the panel will contact the mahogany cleats that are attached to the aluminum ribs. I’ll wet that out and edge seal the panel, then apply wood flour-thickened epoxy when I bond it in place.

Position the insulation, then weigh it down

Same process for the aft stateroom transom cabinet panels

Aft stateroom porthole surround panels get the same treatment

Done insulating…time to let the sticky epoxy cure

Next day, epoxy is cured

Headboard shelf panel should stay warm to the touch, even in winter

Insulated on one side, pretty mahogany on the other

Ready to install

Buffalo Batt: R3 insulation value in 1.5″ of woven fabric that doesn’t absorb water or itch

That’s it for the insulating. Now for the fun part!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Port V-berth Mahogany Wall Panel

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Sanding and Spraying the Top Coat on the Mahogany Panels

The V-berth and aft stateroom mahogany panels are looking very nice. Things sure go faster when my schedule aligns with my Boatamalan* painter. I might actually have the portholes installed soon!

*Boatamalan: portmanteau indicating highly skilled boat workers of Central American origin. They’re actually from Honduras, but boat + [Guat]amalan has a nicer ring to it.

Final sanding with 320 grit Abranet

The second round of ICA base clear went on nice and flat, which makes for easy final sanding. But this mahogany has some deep grain that makes it tough to fill it entirely. The strange thing is that the grain is deep on some panels but flat on others, even when the panels were cut from the same sheet of plywood. Nature apparently doesn’t have a robust Quality Control department.

I sand the faces with the Mirka Ceros sander, then hit the edges with a hand sanding block

The transom cabinetry

Sand it smooth, but don’t go too far

The deep grain I mentioned makes it challenging to get the sanding just right. Don’t go far enough, and the grain makes a surface that’s not perfectly smooth. Go too far, and you can sand through the base coat. Fortunately, I didn’t breach the base coat anywhere.

Sanded just enough, but with some pinhole and grain depressions left behind

Dust fills the pinhole and grain depressions

Full air blast takes a long time to clear the dust

It was taking a long time to blow the dust out of the little depressions that remain. So I used some lint-free microfiber towels to lightly wipe each panel while blowing it with air. That approach worked a lot better, instantly clearing all of the dust from the depressions.

A cluster of little depressions along an edge

Different panel cut from the same plywood

It’s the darndest thing: not a single pinhole or grain depression on the entire panel

Air blast + microfiber cloth = no dust

Perfect conditions…time to spray

ICA semi-matte top coat is very nice

30 minutes after two top coats were applied, it’s dry to the touch

I very carefully moved the panels inside the tent

Finding safe places to put all of these finished panels was a bit of a challenge. I’ll leave them to cure for a week, so I can’t stack them like I did when they were unfinished. I eventually found enough flat spaces on the boat to lay them all out, then carefully stepped off the boat. Next I’ll insulate the back side of all of the panels with Buffalo Batt woven fabric. Then I’ll start installing the panels into their final resting places. But before that, I’ll install the V-berth panels that only got base coated. I’m stoked!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Insulating Mahogany Wall Panels

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Sanding and Spraying the 2nd Coat on the Mahogany Panels

The good news is that I’m finally making progress on getting mahogany plywood clear coated. The bad news is that, realistically, there’s no way I’m going to splash the boat this year. I’m OK with that. Life gets in the way sometimes…gotta just roll with it and keep an eye on the prize.

Start the day sanding

The panels in the pic above are for the laundry, storage, and clothes closets on the port side of the aft stateroom.

Pretty mahogany

More porthole surround panels

I like that Mirka Ceros sander. It’s super light–about the same as an air sander–but uses a DC brushless motor.

Back panels for the V-berth head cabinet

Sanded and wiped down…ready for the second base coat

Slight modification to the filter box

The filter material was being hit directly with the air flow from the extractor fan hose, causing the center of the filter to get coated and clogged up with the thick ICA base coat clear. So I put a piece of scrap 1/4″ luan in as a deflector baffle. Hopefully, the ICA will stick to the inside of the box and disperse out across the face of the filter material now instead of concentrating in the middle.

Time to spray

Next morning…good lookin’ base coat!

Pretty panel

I like that little cabinet panel. Unfortunately, it’ll almost never be seen since it’s the back panel for the toilet paper storage cabinet in the V-berth head.

The painter really flowed out the ICA base coat nicely

I had two loads of mahogany to be base coated. So with the first load done, I sanded the second load and hung the panels in the origami spray booth. The painter came and sprayed at the end of the day. The following morning, the panels were ready to come out of the booth for one more round of sanding with 320 grit.

V-berth wall panels with 8 coats of ICA base coat clear

Very pretty mahogany

Transom cabinet panels look good

All of the panels got four coats of ICA base, followed by sanding with 240 grit to a smooth finish. We just applied four more coats of base, and everything is looking good.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Sanding and Spraying the Top Coat on the Mahogany Panels

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Spraying Mahogany Panels with ICA Base Coat Clear

Finally, at long last, I got the mahogany plywood that’s been cut and fitted since March into the origami spray booth for coating with ICA clear coat.

Houston…WTF

I came back to the boatyard to find that a trailered sailboat had been moved onto the new patch of gravel next to my tent. Unfortunately, there’s not much room between the sailboat and the origami spray booth. Now my first priority is moving the booth.

Relocate the spray booth 10′ forward of where it was

Relocated and ready to hang panels

Unfortunately, the time it took to move the booth delayed hanging the panels. By the time I got finished hanging them, it was too late to spray…have to delay until the next morning.

The following morning, water drips on the wood

A passing shower caused rain to drip around the perimeter of the tent, where the water just happened to drop on the string that’s suspending a few panels. It ran down the string and made the wood damp…can’t spray until that dries completely.

Finally, ready to spray as evening approaches

The first four coats look good!

I’ll leave it to dry overnight

Good looking mahogany!

Transom window surround panels look great!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Sanding and Spraying the 2nd Coat on the Mahogany Panels

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Cutting and Fitting the V-berth Starboard Side Mahogany Panel

With the port V-berth side panel cut and fitted, it was much easier doing the starboard side. It’s still challenging, but at least I got this one done in only one day.

Backside of the port panel marked for insulation

I’ve been putting Buffalo Batt insulation on the backside of all plywood panels that face the hull. Between that and the spray foam on the hull itself, I’m hoping this metal boat will be comfortable no matter the season. But insulating the back of each panel adds a day to the process of cutting and installing them. Still, I think it will be worth it in the end.

Starboard panel fit surprisingly well on the first try

Other V-berth panels I cut previously

I had these painted last year, but never posted the pix

A woodworker hobbyist buddy of mine calls this ‘wood porn’

So, both V-berth side panels are ready for ICA clear coat. Unfortunately, my painter has been too busy at work and our schedules haven’t matched up. I really didn’t want to have to learn how to spray paint, but this is getting frustrating. Hopefully, he’ll get them sprayed this weekend.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Taking A Break…sort of