1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Mahogany IV

You know how it goes with projects: the prep takes 90% of the total time and it’s kind of ugly along the way, then in a blink it’s done and everything’s pretty? The aft deck solid mahogany went kinda like that.

First, I sanded all of the mahogany pieces with Mirka Abranet 240

I hit all of the flat surfaces first with just the stock sanding pad. With Abranet, the vacuum pulls almost all of the dust through. It’s a lot better than any paper-backed sandpaper I’ve ever used.

Once the flat areas are done, I put a foam spacer pad on and hit the radiused edges. Then move on to the next piece and repeat.

Ready for Spar varnish

First coat seals the wood

Second coat

3rd coat and done

Ready to install.

First, saturate the back-sides of each panel with US Composites epoxy

At the same time, we wetted out the hardtop structural wood that these pieces will attach to.

Next, trowel on some wood flour and cabosil-thicken epoxy

Glued & screwed in place

Repeat the process for the center and starboard panels

Next up come the long side panels

Gotta keep the epoxy off of the Awlgrip paint!

Saturate the wooden attachment points

That 50-year old plywood I reused here sure soaks up the epoxy.

More wood flour and cabosil-thickened epoxy

Trowel on the glue and get ready to screw

Ready to install the panel

That’s quite nice

Port side got installed next

Next, we installed bungs in the screw holes

The bungs will get sanded later and get a few spot coats of varnish. Then I’ll sand all of the wood back here and apply the final coat. But that’ll happen after the boat’s splashed.

Last step: install the window finish pieces

It would have looked cleaner to just make these side pieces out of a single mahogany stick. But the little finish pieces can be removed without destroying anything, and that will allow me to take out the windows if I have to. I find that the window tracks I’m using get packed with dirt, and that makes the windows slide less smoothly. Being able to remove the glass and give the tracks a thorough cleaning is a periodical maintenance item. So it’s worth having the little finish/fascia panels removable.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Radio Box II

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Mahogany III

With the helm bulkhead refreshed with a new sheet of mahogany, I got busy on the cabinet on the starboard side of the helm.

1/2″ ribbon-stripe mahogany ply is rough cut for the helm side cabinet faces

Gotta tighten up that gap at the top of the port-side helm cabinet panel a bit

I broke the panels down with 90° cuts a month or so ago when I was racing against rain from a hurricane to get the plywood inside the tent. But the decks aren’t 90° to the bulkhead. They’re angled, so any water that comes in will flow aft and off the boat.

Gotta love the EurekaZone track saw for making angled plywood cuts

That’s better

Before I glued the veneer panel on the helm bulkhead, I was fitting the side cabinet panels

That’s better

That’s better…time for varnish

Second coat

That one-part urethane Spar Varnish is driving me nuts. It gums up the Mirka Abranet 240 grit almost immediately.

MasterMind plunge saw is a great tool for cutting cabinet door openings

Finish the corner cuts with the Makita jigsaw

The jigsaw blades have a bigger kerf than the little plunge saw.

That’s looking pretty good

Time to make a cabinet box frame

That nasty looking piece of cracked, half-painted 1″ thick mahogany must have come from the OEM forward head enclosure. I saved it because I knew it’d come in handy one day.

Today’s that day.

Chopping up 1/4″ ribbon-stripe mahogany plywood into cabinet box parts

No screws this time

I’m framing out the cabinet box with mahogany solid stock wetted out with US Composites epoxy followed by epoxy thickened with wood flour and cabosil

Next day, it’s all coming together

Next, I’ll varnish the cabinet box panel faces, epoxy the backing cleats to each panel, fit and finish the back panels, then this cabinet’s ready to install.

“Progress”

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Mahogany IV

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Mahogany III

Things have been less than optimal recently, but to the extent possible I’m not letting it slow me down. Gotta get this thing done. I was pre-occupied last week with some nonsense that hopefully will end soon, so I didn’t have time to post any articles. I hope to catch up on them this week.

When last I wrote about aft deck mahogany, I’d cut and fitted a big sheet of 1/8″ mahogany plywood that I’ll use as veneer on the helm bulkhead. Time to get ‘er varnished and installed.

Fitted and ready for varnish

The approach I’ve been using with new mahogany panels is to varnish first, even just one or two coats, then epoxy the backside and glue them in place. That allows me to avoid getting epoxy stains in the grain that can mess up the appearance of the wood through the varnish.

First coat of Spar varnish soaks in fast

Second coat is more uniform

One thing I don’t like about one-part spar varnish is that it doesn’t dry anywhere near as hard and fast as the two-part stuff. In retrospect, I should have just used ICA base coat here like I did in the rest of the interior. But I was under the impression it didn’t have the UV protection that exterior spar varnish has. Turns out that may not be the case.

Anyway, sanding this stuff is a real drag because it clogs up the sandpaper very quickly. Waiting a week between application and sanding for the subsequent coat seems to help, but I don’t have that kind of time to devote to waiting for resins to lock in tight. Lesson learned.

Three coats on…doesn’t look too bad!

Time to drill a hole or two.

Kidde CO2 fire extinguisher trigger hole will help clamp the panel in place

Holes are drilled and the starboard side cabinet cleats are fitted, too

The cabinet cleat will also help clamp the panel in place.

OK…it’s showtime!

Next I sanded off the old varnish on the original bulkhead

I’ll bet that was really pretty back in the day. Gotta do something about that big hole somebody cut in the bulkhead for the old autopilot.

This 19mm Okume scrap will do the trick

Friction fit is nice and tight

Next, mix up the epoxy and wet everything out

Trowel wood-flour and fumed silica-thickened epoxy on the wetted out helm bulkhead

Install the panel and clamp in place

That’s almost a wrap on the helm station bulkhead. Just have to wait for the epoxy to cure. Now that summer’s over, it’s going to take longer and longer for it to kick.

Anyway, it’s looking a lot better than when we got the boat!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Mahogany III

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: One-Mile Ray Searchlight

Before we can install the headliner, all of the electrical systems in the ceiling of the aft deck hardtop have to be done. The basic wiring in the hardtop is finished. Next I have to assemble and install the One-Mile Ray Searchlight.

I had this searchlight rechromed way back in 2009. The parts have been sitting in a box at my house ever since.

The chrome is like-new but the wiring needs help

 

New #10 wire should do the trick

The searchlight is assembled…ready to go to the boat

That’s a good looking 50-year old searchlight

Next, I redrilled the hole for the searchlight controls

Way back when we were prepping the aft deck hardtop for paint, we bonded the no-longer pretty mahogany searchlight base to the hardtop, then fiberglassed and filleted it so it’s a permanent feature. Chris Craft used varnished mahogany, which is more maintenance than I was willing to do. With a new fiberglass skin covering the original searchlight control hole, I had to redrill it to install the searchlight.

The headliner installer has also been busy installing track bases 1/2″ below surfaces like the searchlight base on the underside of the hardtop. When the 1/2″ tall tracks and headliner are installed, the headliner should be on the same plane as the mahogany block that the searchlight controls attach to. But as I was drilling the hole for the searchlight, I noticed that the big mahogany block was moving.

That looks funny

The black glue they used to attach the blocks to the frames has broken loose. Also, I noticed that where the glue broke, the frame underneath is painted white. That’s fine for sealing the wood, but glue doesn’t bond well to unsanded, painted surfaces.

Pushed back up into place

This is going to be more complicated than I’d imagined. Instead of pushing up, I pulled down.

Well…that’s a lot of rock-hard glue that mostly wasn’t stuck to anything!

I knocked the block of glue off with a scraper

As you can see, there was only one place where the block of glue had adhered to the mahogany.

That’s a lot of glue

I don’t know if that’s polyester or epoxy filler thickened with microballoons or fumed silica or…who knows what. But there sure is a lot of it.

Nice, moldy mess

This scrap piece of original marine plywood will make a better spacer than glue

Same 1/2″ thickness

I’ll hit that with a grinder to knock off the mold, dirt, and paint

The plywood here is surprisingly solid. I’ll saturate it with epoxy when I glue and screw all of this back together.

New spacer fits well

Test fitting the mahogany blocks

Parts are fitted and sanded…ready for epoxy

US Composites epoxy and 2:1 no-blush hardener should be better than the original glue

After thoroughly wetting out all bond surfaces with epoxy, I added wood flour and fumed silica to make a thick glue that I spread over everything. Then I screwed the whole thing together.

Glued and screwed in place

The headliner installer will have to redo the headliner track spacers now that the searchlight base blocks are in a different position.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Antennas

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Helm Station Radio Box

With the aft deck overhead wiring pretty much done, next I need to make the overhead box t the helm station for the radios and fuel gauge. Fortunately, I’ve got some gorgeous leftovers from resawing the mahogany boards I used for the aft stateroom fascia boards. Those boards were leftover moldings from a golf clubhouse refurb, according to the contractor who was selling them on craigslist a decade ago. I used the 5/8″ flat boards for the fascia panels, which left me with four partially shaped 7/16″ boards that’ll be perfect for this radio box.

The radio box on the boat back in December 2007

I think I can do better.

Partially shaped leftover moldings will make a great radio box

This shows great potential

After tracing the overhead frame curve on the face panel, I cut it with a jigsaw then repeated for the back panel

Cutting the end boards

Getting ready to square up the bottom, face, and back boards

After squaring up the far end and lower ends of the boards, I clamped them and cut the near end with my Dewalt miter saw set to 0°.

Next came the glue-up using US Composites 635 epoxy and 2:1 no-blush hardener

All the joint edges are thoroughly wetted out

Epoxy thickened with wood flour and cabosil makes very strong glue

Bring on the clamps!

I found that using cheap pine boards cut perfectly square help keep the box face and back panel boards square to the bottom while clamping. Without them, the upper edges tended to bow inward.

Not a bad looking joint

I cleaned up the epoxy that squeezed-out then went home

Next day, that’s one sturdy box

I like it!

Next, I cut the holes in the face panel for the radios and fuel gauge

Looks about right

That’s pretty much what I had in mind

Next, sand the bottom panel and edges smooth so the router rides flat

And round the edges with a 1/2″ radius bit

That’s looking great!

I could have reversed the faces of the box end boards so they were flat instead of shaped, but I’ve had those moldings for a decade and thought it was better to let at least part of the shaped portion be visible. It adds a bit of character and there’s a story behind it.

Next, I outlined the access hatch on the back panel

This little 3″ MasterMind plunge saw has been extremely handy for hatch-cutting

Fitting moldings to the access hatch

Epoxy and wood flour bond the edge moldings to the access hatch

I had to get creative to clamp the little moldings to the access panel.

Sanded with 120 then 240 grit Mirka Abranet

That’s looking pretty good!

Ready for varnish

MAHOGANY PORN!!!

First coat is looking pretty good!

Wood flour and cabosil-thickened epoxy with some very light fiberglass and fillets bolster the joints inside

Second coat of varnish on the radio box

Those other mahogany sticks are the corner pieces I made for the aft deck wall panels.

Access panel is looking great!

Looks even better installed!

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: One-Mile Ray Searchlight

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: 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

Before I splash the boat, I need to have my Boatamalan painter spray the interior with ICA polyurethane top coat. Before that can happen, the headliner has to be installed. And before THAT can happen, the plywood next to the headliner has to be pretty. But the panels at the entryway for the aft stateroom are anything but pretty.

There are at least six problems in this hot mess

1. it’s ugly
2. there’s an old HVAC supply hole cut in the bulkhead under the stairs

Problem 3: the bulkhead is curved

I made a door jamb that solves half of the problem with the curved bulkhead, but I still need to resolve the other half.

Problem 4: Chris Craft painted all of the beautiful mahogany white back here

Problem 5: The lower bulkhead has a small patch of rot

And problem #6: Chris Craft didn’t put these lower bulkheads in perpendicular to the floor. They screwed them in and pushed them into place against the aluminum framing (which warps a bit when heated during welding), then cut everything from the stairs to the cabinetry, to fit the warped panels. Fixing all of these sins is a big challenge.

Fortunately, I’ve got one more sheet of 1/8″ mahogany for this sort of thing.

First, I cut some 1/8″ mahogany panels to fit

The laundry closet door frame will butt up against the left edge of the new panel, which hides a whole bunch of ugly.

That looks better

It also works well with the new door jamb I made

This is gonna work!

Ugly, curved bulkhead? What ugly, curved bulkhead???

The other two panels look good, too!

I like it!

Next, I marked off the “curved zone”

The curved zone is where I’ll have to build up material so the new panel lays flat and perpendicular to the floor. The curve in the bulkhead is worst nearest the door opening. 18 inches over to the outboard side, there’s almost no curve at all.

The bottom of the bulkhead needed more than 1/4″ of material to build it up

I also used a router to knock off ~1/8″ from the top of the panel here. Chris Craft really didn’t care one jot about making these square.

Plywood scraps will be filler pieces

Filler pieces glued in place, roughed up, and ready for panel install

Next, wet out the back of the skinny plywood piece

Wood flour-thickened epoxy is the glue here

Conventional clamps hold the panel up top

Push sticks and other goofy clamps down below

Floor hatch makes for a big push stick!

Next day, panel 2 gets glued in place

I went through a lot of wood flour-thickened epoxy glue today

One more plywood filler panel saves on epoxy

Mahogany panel gets wetted out and topped with wood flour-thickened epoxy

More funky push-stick clamps here

I use shrink wrap plastic scraps when pressing pretty mahogany into epoxy. If any epoxy leaks through, it won’t stick to the plastic.

Push sticks in place, time to leave

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Stateroom Entryway Mahogany Panels II

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Gorgeous Aft Stateroom Fascia Boards

The aft stateroom mahogany fascia boards went to the paint shop and came back finished with eight coats of ICA base clear and two of the matte top coat. They look great.

These look great!

The unpainted surfaces are the contact points where the boards will be epoxied to the ceiling framing.

The big aft board gets glued and clamped in place

Leave it to cure overnight

Next day, the side boards get glued and clamped

First, I wet out the bare wood with US Composites 635 epoxy resin, then I top it with generous dollops of the same epoxy thickened with wood flour.

Ceiling framing wetted out and coated with wood flour-thickened epoxy

Clamps in place and ready to grab the board

Looks good!

1″ x 1″ mahogany cleats help spread the clamping force

I use shrink wrap tape on the cleats so they don’t mark the pretty boards. I find that also helps eliminate ‘print through’ that can happen if the ICA top coat isn’t fully cured.

Nice, tight joint that’s also glued

Port side is next

That’s a pretty board

Next day, off come all the clamps

These turned out really nice!

Now that the fascia boards are installed, we’re almost ready to install the Whisper Wall headliner tracks.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Last Aft Stateroom Overhead Filler Boards