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: 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