Drawers for sport fishing boat

It’s been few years since I’ve worked on boats. I took on this job because the customer was able to bring this fiberglass pedestal to me. The pedestal has a swivel chair mounted on the top when it’s on the boat. Originally it had two doors. They looked nice but neatly storing anything was haphazard at best. The first step was to built out the interior walls to provide battens to install the stainless steel drawer slides. They were made of teak and epoxied and screwed in place from the outside with stainless steel oval head screws and finish washers. They were somewhat challenging because the sides were slanted. Rockler’s 3-in-1 Bar Gauge was invaluable in making sure the battens were perfectly parallel to each other. The drawer box fronts had to be slanted to match the angle of the pedestal. I finished the baltic birch drawer boxes with four coats of Exterior 450 and the teak drawer fronts with six coats of Outdoor Oil, both products from General Finishes. After this photo was taken, I installed stainless steel draw bolts to keep the drawers secure in heavy seas. They somewhat detracted from the clean look of the project but were a necessary evil.

-- sugarpine