New gauges and some beautiful mahogany (tutorial)

[natemoore]

I recently replaced my old, ugly gauges and dashboard with NOS medallion gauges and mahogany wood. What a difference it makes.

The steps to making the mahogany very glossy, after achieving the right shape, are to finish sand, fill the grain, sand again, spray a coat of conversion varnish sealer, scuff sand, apply another coat, scuff sand, the apply another coat. You want a thick film because in the next step, you'll sand a lot of it off.

Using 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper and naptha as a lubricant, wet sand out any remaining grain marks. I noticed that the sanding residue started to fill the small grain pores and compressed air wouldn't get it out, nor would a clean cloth wetted with naptha. So, I mixed up some medium brown aniline dye and denatured alcohol and stained it. The color came out really nice. If you want it darker, just keep applying the dye/alcohol mixture.

I still wasn't satisfied with the smoothness, so I applied one more coat of conversion varnish sealer, wet sanded, applied dye, then began top coating with gloss conversion varnish. I sprayed on a total of three coats, scuff sanding with a 320 sponge between each coat.

The final coat was as slick as glass shortly after is cured (30 minutes), but after sitting overnight, I noticed a little bit of the grain texture showing. Guess I got in a hurry to get it done. If I wanted to, I could have wet sanded the finish again and applied another coat, but I'm happy with this. It is a 27 year old boat after all.

 

[natemoore]

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Okay. Second attempt to post pictures doesn't work. :-( 600x400 and 64K file size. What am I doing wrong?

Edit: I went back and added the pictures using Photobucket.

 

[natemoore]

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Okay. It worked that time. I'll try another.

 

[natemoore]

That one didn't work, but I got this nice message: "There has been a database error, and the current page cannot be displayed. Site staff have been notified."

 

[natemoore]

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Hopefully, the picture of finished dash will post.

 

[natemoore]

Here's a dropbox link the the pictures I've been trying to upload.

 

[mercurymang]

You provided a link to dropbox but not your pictures. What you need to do is bring up the pictures in a browser windows and grab the url for it. In you post, type

Also you need to make sure you have shared the pictures so that they may be viewed by us.

 

[natemoore]

Arrrgh! I miss the old iboats! Cut and paste this link into your browser address bar if you want to see the pictures: "https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1qwq0oo7i9qlw5r/AACnA-M5ggD2PH4qMkJrbjmja?dl=0"

 

[natemoore]

You provided a link to dropbox but not your pictures. What you need to do is bring up the pictures in a browser windows and grab the url for it. In you post, type

Also you need to make sure you have shared the pictures so that they may be viewed by us.

I'm pretty sure I did it right. When I went back in to edit the dropbox link, it showed the correct link to that dropbox folder, but when I saved the edit, it just shows the dropbox.com link. I also pasted the link in a new browser window and the correct pictures came up.

 

[natemoore]

Here is the link to the dropbox folder: "https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1qwq0oo7i9qlw5r/AACnA-M5ggD2PH4qMkJrbjmja?dl=0" Now, I'm going to paste the exact same link using the "link icon" right next to the camera icon. Okay. Looks good. Now I'm posting. We'll see what happens.

Mercmang, that didn't work. I hopped over to tundrasolutions, posted my link there, copied the html garbage along with link, deleted my post, then pasted here in an edit. This is crazy.

http://www.dropbox.com/sh/1qwq0oo7i9...MkJrbjmja?dl=0

 

[Woodonglass]

Make it simple. Open a Free Photobucket account. Post your pics and then copy and paste the IMG Code directly into iBoats. Eazy Smeazy.

 

[mercurymang]

Ok, you're almost there. You provided a link to your folder. The actual url is like this:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1qwq0oo7i...l-DSC00593.JPG

so you can do this

Edit: Well doesn't look like that works. But when i just pasted the url in, that link worked.

 

[Tail_Gunner]

Looks good from here

 

[natemoore]

It would be nice if the forum software worked as intended and didn't take 5 minutes to load a post.

 

[mercurymang]

It would be nice if the forum software worked as intended and didn't take 5 minutes to load a post.

yup

 

[natemoore]

yup

So, it's not just me?

 

[Woodonglass]

Hey since Nate's been away Let's Blame Him! Yeah That's the ticket...It's ALL Nate's Fault! It was all working fine Till Nate Came back and Now Nothing works Right Dag Nabbit Nate What did You Do!!!!:boink::heh::crutch::argue:

 

[pckeen]

No - best method BY FAR is to open a photobucket account. It's free. Upload the pics to there (I usually ensure they are low res web pics rather than the original high res image), then click on the pic, then click on the box to the right of "Img" If you have done it right, the box will flash 'copied'

Then right click in the textbox on iboats, and click 'paste.' You'll end up with something that looks like this (except when you see it before clicking post reply) it will look like a web address).

 

[natemoore]

Ok pckeen, here goes. Now that was easy. Thanks!

 

[natemoore]

I used a couple of mahogany guitar neck blanks to make this 1/4" board. You can buy prefabricated mahogany blanks on ebay, but since I have a jointer, planer, and resaw jig on my bandsaw, I made my own. The thickness was determined by the neck length of the new switches I bought. This will be screwed to the fiberglass console, so it won't warp.