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

Aug8

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: Fitting the V-berth Hatch Screen Track

May23

With the perimeter of the V-berth ready for the Whisper Wall headliner track to be installed, the last step is to get the supports installed for the hatch sliding screen tracks.

The screen tracks will need a bit of cleaning…some day

Half of the original hatch sliding screen framing is there

Like everything else, the original framing is fine for an OEM-style headliner. But because the Whisper Wall track is 1/2″ tall, I need to add some height to the existing framing and make new framing around the hatch opening.

Kind of like that

Cool Chris Craft switch controls the Kai LEDs

It looks better with the tent support 2×4 out of the way

Another thing I’ve been doing recently is cleaning up all of the stuff that hangs from the ceiling in the boat. The ceiling frames are a great place to stow woodworking clamps and electrical power strips, and I’ve got CAT5 cable for alarm components strung all over. And all of that needs to get relocated so the headliner can be installed.

The slider screen frame will seal up against the headliner with that fuzzy stuff…whatever it’s called

That’s a wrap

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the V-berth Headliner Tracks

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Salon Entryway Sliding Screen Tracks II

Apr11

I got the salon entryway sliding screen tracks machined and am now waiting for the painter to finish spraying ICA polyurethane base coat clear on the mahogany panels that the screen tracks fit into. There’s lots of other progress being made on the Roamer, but I also have a 1968 Chris Craft Commander 42 that needed some maintenance. I took a week off work and drove the boat to the closest marina with a travel lift, had it hauled, and have been sanding and painting the bottom. She splashes at noon today.

Commander 42 coming out of the Potomac River

While the boat was being blocked, I strolled around the boatyard to check out the relics on purgatory row. There was one boat that caught my eye…and what a surprise!

At first, I thought this was an old woody

Gryphon looked like a planked wooden boat from a distance.

It’s definitely plank construction, but that’s funny looking wood

Gryphon’s planked with aluminum!

Back to the Roamer…

I set up my ShopSmith to machine the screen tracks

Ready to go!

Looking good!

The other track is trickier

These sliding cabinet door tracks I’m using are different top and bottom. The upper track is shorter than the bottom one, so I’ll have to machine the tops off to get the second track down to the same height as the first. It has to be the same height so it’ll fit through the jig I made that holds the track in position as it goes past the router bit.