The new year has rolled in here with some raw weather. A storm found us last night, and as I type this update this morning, the temperature outside is -1 F. The lows foretasted for next week are -15.
The wheel house door is aluminum, and instead of sheathing the wheelhouse side of the door with aluminum, I decided during building of the door, that I would sheath it in Cherry.
This is a fairly straight forward door, but like all things engineered by the seat of ones pants, I have to build a little forgiveness into my designs. The biggest guess I had to make was how much of a gap to leave between the door stops and the door to accommodate a sealing gasket.
For this purpose, I made the hardwood stops easy to be removed by installing threaded inserts into the door. The threaded inserts are installed by drilling a proper sized hole, then using a special tool to crimp the insert into the hole in the aluminum.
This is almost identical to a rivet, but is extremely robust. I bedded the hardwood stops in silicone and used a 10-24 x 1.5" stainless pan head screw to fasten the stops. The screws are 12" on center. The other alternative to fasten the stops to the jamb would have been to through bolt the stops in place, but if one ever have to remove a stop later down the road, the casings would also have to be removed to access the nuts. Through bolting is also kind of sloppy in my opinion and alignment seems to be a fuzz more difficult when through bolting. I sheathed the door with 1/2" Cherry plywood.
Because I did not want to see the edge of the plywood I turned to my tried and true method of ironing hardwood veneer. Ive been using this iron on edge banding for years now, and have never had any issue with the adhesive failing. 
Once you iron the edge on, you trim it off with a special tool that cuts both sides flush in one pass. A light sanding with 220 is all thats needed to make the edge perfect. I love the edge banding system. 
Im totally happy with how the door looks sheathed in cherry vs sheathed in aluminum, but I do have one issue Im going to have to deal with. The Trioving lockset fits good in the thick door, but the dead bolt trim does not work with the thickness created by the 1/2" ply. In order to make this work, Ill have to remove the sheathing, and cut square around the deadbolt, then brake a aluminum trim piece to hide the edge of the ply in this area, and re install the ply. I dont have a picture showing this issue, but the lock set is installed and working correctly although the dead bolt does not look as it should.
The wheel house walls are almost finished being sheathed, and most of the window trim is installed. The stairwell ties in to the wheel house and salon sheathing and is burning up some time. Theres a lot of confabulated, ridiculous boat type detail in the stairwell area, but I should have it wrapped up next week.
After almost a two week absence from working on her, I can tell you it feels great to be back working on moving things forward.
Cheers
