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: 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 V-berth Head Moldings

I had to take a break from polishing stainless, so I installed some moldings for the v-berth head. This thing is taking forever to get done, in part, because of the scorching hot summer, but also because my painter hasn’t been feeling well recently. Hopefully, we’ll get it painted before autumn sets in and it gets too cold to paint.

The access panel behind the toilet and the hole it fits in need to be squared up

Eureka Zone track saw makes perfectly straight cuts

Just need to take off a smidgeon

The panel is square

I use the rubber spacers that came with the new glass to center the panel in the hole

Harbor Freight’s multi-tool is perfect for squaring up the hole

Squared up well enough and almost ready for moldings

The molding profile

After trimming off more of the panel edges to make room for the molding, it was time to start gluing. Fortunately, the painter came in, finished sanding the first prime coat, then sprayed Awlquik.

First, I wetted out the toilet paper storage space edges with epoxy

I wetted out the back-side of each molding after I did the plywood.

Epoxy thickened with a 30/70 mix of cabosil and wood flour

Apply wood flour-thickened epoxy to the moldings

Rube Goldberg clamping system holds everything in place

Every clamp, stick, screwdriver, scrap of plywood, and sanding pad is absolutely essential to hold the moldings in place

Good squeeze-out means there will be a good bond on the moldings for the toilet paper cabinet

After cleaning up the squeeze-out with a squeegee and a final wipe with alcohol on a rag, I repeated the process for the panel moldings.

Ready for glue

Variation on a trucker’s hitch clamps all of the moldings to the panel

Every stick and piece of string is essential

After the epoxy cures and the clamps come off

Nice glue line

Done!

Now I just need to wait for the painter to show up, finish sanding the Awlquik, and get the head ready for Awlgrip 545 primer.

In the meantime, I’m pushing forward with the exhaust risers.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Final Exhaust Riser Fit-up

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

With the moldings cut for the V-berth head, next I had to sand them and send them off to the paint shop to be coated with ICA base coat clear, then finished with ICA top coat clear. It’s still hot and humid in the Mid-Atlantic region, which isn’t helping the project move along. But even fits and starts are still moving forward.

Moldings ready for sanding

My super-fancy molding sanding jig

Sanding two or three sides of delicate moldings is hard to do on a table without dinging the sanded edges and faces. This jig keeps the easily damaged visible parts scuff and scratch free. After sanding from 120, 240 and then 320 grit, the moldings are ready for the paint shop.

Pretty!

The fiberglassed and faired panel on top will be framed with molding

The Throne Room

First, square up the cabinet openings

I used a 4-1/2″ grinder and my Harbor Freight multi-tool to square up the fiberglass around the cabinet openings. The fiberglassed and faired panel will fit snugly in this opening, and the mahogany moldings will cover the joint.

Houston, we have a problem

I found a small spot where the fiberglass had separated from the plywood. We’ll have to break that open, wet it out real good, and backfill with wood flour-thickened epoxy, then fair again and apply Awlquick before I can finish up the molding installation. And because I can only work on weekends, that means another week will pass before the painter can get in here and finish up.

Dang it!

So I kept cutting and fitting moldings for the other cabinet opening.

Next up…the TP storage cabinet.

That’s looking pretty good…dusty, but good

Almost ready for glue-up

Houston…WTF?

I found another spot where the fiberglass had pulled away from the plywood before the epoxy cured. Unfortunately, the Boatamalans didn’t spot these areas when they were fairing. That would have saved a lot of time. So now I’m waiting for them to repair these areas, then I’ll come back and get the moldings installed so they can continue with primer and paint. In the meantime, there’s plenty of other things going on.

Especially…shiny things. 🙂

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: More Chrome!

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: Moldings for the Aft Stateroom Head

When I last worked on the aft stateroom head early in the summer of 2015, the walls were fiberglassed and faired and I’d made the ceiling panels. Before I start the priming and painting, I need to make moldings for the door opening and the jamb for the sliding door. The door opening moldings will basically cap the ends of the 3/4″ mahogany plywood. Since I’ll be using that approach everywhere there are exposed plywood panel edges, I’ll set up my ShopSmith and run off several lengths of identical molding at the same time.

The original interior concept rendering

Detail-level pieces of the concept rendering

While my interior concept drawings work well as a guide, I need greater detail and also need to refine the measurements to match the real aft head walls before I start cutting wood. Planning out the corner piece/door jamb in Sketchup’s free CAD software also allows me to plan the order of operations I’ll need to take to make the piece. This stuff is probably second nature for professional woodworkers, but it’s all new to me. I may be a rank amateur, but I want to get it right.

I’ll start with a long hunk of rectangular mahogany

First cuts will make the panel attachment point

Second series of cuts will make the door jamb/pocket

Something like this…

Gotta make sure I get all the measurements right

I’ll use router bits in my ShopSmith to round the exposed corners

And in the end, it ought to look something like this

Relocate the ShopSmith outside and start setting it up

It sucks having to cut, route, and sand lots of wood in Tent Model X. There’s just no room. So I find it’s easiest to wrestle the ShopSmith outside, but since I’m in a boatyard with a gravel lot it’s not easy. Once outside, I set up the table saw and sliced off the strips I’ll use for panel end moldings. Then I brought out the bigger piece of lumber and made the cuts for the corner piece/door pocket. I  followed up with dado cuts to clear out material from the door jamb/pocket and moldings, and finally rounded the outside edges.

3/4″ plywood end cap moldings

First corner cuts for the corner piece

Another problem is that the ShopSmith is down on the gravel outside the tent but the corner piece I’m making goes inside the aft stateroom. After making the first cuts, I walked the piece inside the tent, up the ladder, across the aft deck, down the steps to the salon and down the steps to the aft stateroom…THEN I could check the fit and go back outside to make the next cuts. I suppose the exercise will keep me fit! 😉

Looks pretty much like the plan drawings!

Lop off some of the length for a perfect fit, height-wise

After sanding, all of the parts got coated with ICA base and top coat semi-gloss clear

This is the same approach I used with the corner pieces in the aft stateroom, in which I apply the finish before assembling the parts with epoxy thickened with wood flour and cabosil. Doing it this way avoids epoxy stains on the wood. It’s super easy cleaning up any epoxy that squeezes out from the joint using alcohol on a rag, leaving the urethane coating unaffected and beautiful.

Et voila! Beautiful mahogany moldings are ready to install

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Wiring For The Aft Head Lights