1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Mahogany

We’re working on getting the aft deck headliner installed now, which means I need to cut and dry-fit a lot of solid mahogany and plywood. Unfortunately, this part of the refit started with me discovering that the Boatamalan painter had only returned one of three big mahogany pieces from the paint shop. They were the big boards that spanned the top of the windshield frame, and the leading edge of the headliner needs to butt up against them. Rather than trying to make new wood match the old stuff, I decided to just use the recently resawn mahogany boards and make new ones.

Need to trim the helm forward mahogany boards

You can see a crack on the board face

Since I had the boards resawn, what I’ve got is two mirror-image boards with identical grain on the cut faces. I’ll use the portion of the boards that have this attractive knot eye on the port and starboard sides.

Trim off the crack with the EurekaZone track saw

It’s just a tiny little crack on the edge

But was a big mess inside the board

Same thing on the other side

This crack needs trimming, too

After a whole lot of miter and bevel cuts and edge routing, the boards are rough fitted

Pretty good joint

The center board is a bit too thick

Running the center board through the thickness planer greatly improved the joint tightness

That’s looking better

Starboard side is looking good, too

That grain is really going to ‘pop’ when these are varnished.

Looks good!

Next day, I cranked out a couple of corner pieces

These will be used to join four plywood panels

That ought to do

Looks good!

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Resawing Big Mahogany Boards

With the salon, V-berth, and aft stateroom headliners installed, the last space on the boat that needs Whisper Wall is the aft deck. As you know from the earlier posts, before the headliner track can be installed, the surfaces next to the headliner have to be pretty much finished and done. There’s some ugliness that desperately needs covering on the aft deck, and I can’t think of a better way to do that than with some solid mahogany stock. Fortunately, I’ve had a pile of rough cut mahogany boards stickered under the boat since…gad…it’s been ten years!

8/4 B-grade mahogany planks have been sitting under the boat since 2009

At a buck per foot, I couldn’t pass up a load of 8/4 mahogany boards, even if they were B-grade. There was some obvious fall-damage to these two boards, where the tree fractured  when it was brought down, but there’s plenty of material to work with so I’m pretty sure it’ll still work out to be a bargain even if some of the chunks aren’t going to be useful on this refit. At 13 and 14-feet respectively, they were a bit of a challenge moving to Weaver Boatworks with my little pickup. Mr. Weaver graciously agreed to run my lumber through his resaw machine.

What a difference the right tool makes

Board 1 is ready to go

Board 2 is next

8/4 board split in two

Wood porn on public display back at the boatyard

Dang…that’s some pretty lumber

Nice grain…too bad it’s split lengthwise here

The boards are wide enough that even where it’s split, there’s still good lumber that can be salvaged from it.

Sweet grain here

Too bad that eye has a crack through it

It’s still pretty stuff

This part’s a hot mess

But again, that’s two inches of cracked wood on a 12″ board that’ll make somebody nice turning stock. That means there’s ten usable inches worth of board.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about

This end looks very nice

Chop everything up into useful pieces

Six feet of beautiful but cracked mahogany

If I was into making music boxes or wooden pens, this would be a great find. But this cracked 6′ board doesn’t have a place on this boat right now. Maybe it’ll be useful somewhere else, so I’ll put it back in the wood pile without more machining.

That’s a shame, but it’ll come in handy somewhere

Back in the woodshop, I ran the boards through my MiniMax FS35 jointer

That cleaned up real nice

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: V-berth Bed Surround Padded Headliner

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: ICA Basecoat on Moldings and the Aft Stateroom Transom Panel

I’ve been making moldings for the V-berth and fitting a mahogany panel for the aft stateroom transom. Time to varnish them.

First, sand with 120 then 240 Mirka Abranet

Aft stateroom transom panel is ready for shiny

More bits and pieces

I may have prepped too many pieces of mahogany

The problem will be trying to find places to put each piece after I brush on the ICA base coat urethane clear.

Mahogany porn

That’s pretty stuff

First three coats are done

Next day, sand with 320 grit Abranet and repeat

Ready to lay on the next three coats

Six base coats later, the moldings are ready to install

Bare plywood edges need to be covered

Sand the contact area rough to get it ready for epoxy

Wet out the molding contact areas with epoxy and get ready to install

Wood flour-thickened epoxy makes for strong glue

Lay on a heavy coating of epoxy glue

Good squeeze-out means a strong joint

Once all of the pieces are installed, I immediately clean up the squeezed out glue with a plastic squeegee followed by an alcohol-soaked rag.

Push sticks, screw clamps…whatever it takes

As you know, the V-berth headliner is done now. These pix were taken while the headliner was being installed, before the installer showed up or after he went home for the day. Anyway, with a bunch of sticky epoxy curing in the V-berth, I went home, too.

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Transom Panel

I made a bunch of moldings for the V-berth while the salon headliner was being installed, but I want to get a bigger pile of mahogany ready for ICA base coat clear. That stuff stinks, so the fewer times I have to use it the better.

Time to cover up this big, ugly wall of spray foam insulation

Good time to use up half-used tubes of Sikaflex 291

There are two vent chases back here, and Chris Craft never sealed the wooden panels to the hull. All of the panels are edge-sealed with epoxy, so I’m not terribly concerned about rot, but still…keeping water in the chase is better than having it get behind the cabinetry. Sikaflex 291 should seal these seams up just fine.

More vent chase prep

Looking up toward the vent hole

Sikaflex next got applied to the sealing surfaces for the last chase panel

Douglas fir marine plywood chase panel

A while back, I mentioned that I lost a memory card that had all sorts of pictures on it, one series of which was making these chase panels. On the inner face, which you can see above, it’s just plain ol’ Doug fir marine ply. But on the other side, inside the vent chase where water can run down into the bilge, I epoxy-sealed the whole thing and added a layer of light fiberglass just to keep grain cracks under control. These vent chases should be good for the life of the boat.

After installing the Doug fir panels, I epoxy sealed the inner face, too

Next up: finding a pretty mahogany panel in the plywood pile

It’s under there

Looky what we’ve got here!

There’s not that much plywood left. When it’s gone, the project should be pretty much done.

This one ought to do it (this is the B-grade back-side)

EurekaZone EZ-One track saw table is a truly awesome tool

That’s a full 4′ x 8′ sheet of 1/2″ mahogany I’m breaking down in my salon. The saw moves, not the panel, and if you need to do angled cuts…no problem. Just set the track bridge down on your cut marks on either side of the panel, turn on the dust collector and let ‘er rip (or crosscut).

Just like that

Not a bad fit!

Need a little filler panel for the top

That was easy

A little plane work bevels the edge so it’ll seal up tight against the back panel

Booya!

OK. Now I’ve got enough mahogany ready to justify putting myself through the stink of an ICA basecoat application.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: ICA Basecoat on Moldings and the Aft Stateroom Transom Panel

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: V-birth Moldings

While the Whisper Wall headliner installer was busy doing his stuff in the salon, I was working on other stuff and doing what I could to stay out of his way.

I wrapped up the panel work in the V-berth three months ago, and the headliner installation was finished in mid-July. Before the boat splashes, I need to have the ICA top coat sprayed, which means I need to get moldings installed to cover all of the plywood edges.

Repurposing an old mahogany door stile

I wrote about breaking down the old wing doors back in February. This is as good a time as any to put that pretty mahogany back into more noble service than being white-painted doors for a half-century. Seriously, click the link on that article to get the full impression of the long, hard road these mahogany boards have experienced.

New V-berth moldings made from old mahogany

On the left-side molding, you can see the stains from weathering that happened at the piano hinge screws. The wood is solid here and that edge won’t be very visible, so I’m going to leave it. If anybody ever notices, it’ll be a great conversation starter.

That looks a lot better than a raw plywood cut edge

Nice tight fit

More moldings

It doesn’t catch my attention when I’m on the boat, but looking at the above picture I almost wish I’d oriented all of the horizontal panels so the grain aligned. The catch is, I had a limited amount of matched 1/4″ ribbon stripe plywood and I didn’t want to run out before all of the surfaces were covered, regardless of grain orientation. Still…

The last of the V-berth moldings

With all of the moldings rough cut and fitted, they’re ready for sanding and coating with ICA base coat clear. But that stuff is super stinky, so I want to get more mahogany ready for finishing before I mix up a batch.

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

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Salon Entryway Panels and Screens

Four months ago, I made a new salon entryway mahogany panel to replace a damaged, ugly original one.  Then I modified some sliding cabinet door tracks to use as sliding screen tracks at the salon entryway. I sent the new mahogany panel off to the paint shop along with the gorgeous aft stateroom fascia boards. Next I focused on getting the aft stateroom headliner installed, and followed up on that by wrapping up the V-berth headliner. With the final refurb done on the salon entryway sliding screens, I’m ready to install all the bits and pieces here so we can wrap up the headliner track installation in the salon then get the Whisper Wall installed.

First, I installed the panels, taped off the joint line, then removed the panels

Next, I wetted out the contact areas of each panel with epoxy…

…and applied wood flour-thickened epoxy as glue

Chris Craft only used screws and caulk to join these mahogany panels to the entryway. The reason the original mahogany panel broke was because the slot where the screen slider tracks attach make the wood there particularly thin. A crack developed because, presumably, it got bumped hard enough at some point to cause the lower end to move. So I’m using epoxy to attach not just the entire flat contact zone along its length, but also along the contact zones at the ends. Instead of four independent panels held in place by fasteners, they’ll all be bonded together as a three-sided box. I think that will be stronger, and hopefully cracks won’t develop again.

Clamp and screw it all together, then apply a bit of caulk for the screen slider track

Install the slider tracks and screens

Not bad!

Critical piece of stainless

Chris Craft used two different sizes of screen frame here, with one longer than the other. When you pull the lower screen out, it slides along until it hits the stainless piece that’s attached to the leading edge of the upper screen, at which point you’re pulling both screens out of their recessed pocket up above the headliner. When you push the lower screen back toward the recessed pocket opening, it slides along until it hits the stainless piece in the opposite direction, at which point you’re pushing both of them into the recessed pocket. It’s a slick, space-saving approach.

Done!

Now that the entryway panels are installed, we can put the headliner tracks in and butt them up against the panels. This is a big step toward getting the headliner done!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Salon Headliner Tracks

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Varnishing the Aft Stateroom Entryway

I’ve got a lot of mahogany bits that need varnishing. That ICA polyurethane is stinky stuff, so I want to do a lot in one fell swoop.

Sanded and ready for ICA

First three coats turned out great!

Compared to the “before” version, it’s quite an improvement

The beam looks good, too

First coats on the aft stateroom head sliding door box look nice

V-berth moldings, hatch trim rings, and aft stateroom entryway mahogany bits look great when varnished

Nice!

Next day, sand and repeat

Sand with 220 grit Mirka Abranet

then apply three more coats of ICA

Looking very good

The next day, I installed the varnished mahogany door jamb.

Wetted out with US Composites 635 epoxy, then add dollops of wood flour-thickened epoxy

I applied epoxy to the bulkhead with a slight curve in it

And clamped the new door jamb in place

Leave it clamped in place and go home

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Headliner Installation II

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Wrapping up the Aft Stateroom Sliding Door Box

The V-berth hatch trim ring and the one for the aft stateroom turned out nicely, and the the aft stateroom entryway looks better than I expected. I’m going to have some mahogany pieces ready to coat with ICA base clear varnish in addition to the aft stateroom wall, and I want to do a bunch of it all at the same time. That ICA is some stinky stuff. I finished fitting the aft stateroom sliding door box a while back, but I still need to finish the bottom edge. Then, it’s varnish time.

Good lookin’ box…goofy lookin’ edge

That raw plywood needs to get covered.

Mahogany veneer should do the trick

Rough-cut to size

Wetted out with US Composites 635 epoxy and 2:1 hardener

Scrap plywood covered with scrap shrink plastic for a clamping jig

Since I’m using epoxy for the veneer glue, it can seep through the veneer while the part is clamped and stick to whatever it’s sitting on. When that happened a while back, a bit of mahogany peeled off the veneer when I separated them. So now I use shrink wrap plastic leftover from the tent skin replacement to clamp epoxied stuff together. Even if the epoxy seeps through, it doesn’t stick to the plastic.

Ready for clamping

Plywood edge and corner piece are wetted out with epoxy

It’s handy to have lots of Harbor Freight clamps sometimes

Next day, I popped the veneered part off the clamp jig

A little trimming with a razor knife

Mini plane comes in handy for finishing the edges

Sanded smooth and ready for ICA clear

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Varnishing the Aft Stateroom Entryway

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