No Longer Shiftless

Previous to cutting in the hatches, I worked on making the cut in my deck for mounting the throttle/shift control. While I had originally planned to get a stainless steel metal bezel made, my fellow boat builder Ted suggested that I make a wood bezel....great idea! I decided that a two piece bezel would provide a tighter fit and cover up the "dogbone" look of the deck cut out.

Starting with a mock up "box" to mount the controller, I developed the cut out hole that would allow installing the controller levers up through the hole. This mock-up work provided lots of procrastination time from cutting into the real deck and was worth the trouble. After figuring out the cut-out hole size and shape, I used scraps from the deck planking to make the bezel. The deck edge was used to trace a gentle curve to the long edges as a rectangular bezel just didn't look right with all the curves of the boat.

After making the bezel it looked like it might interfere with where I might want to locate the windshield bracket, so I decided to move the controller outboard 3/4". So an auxiliary extender piece was made to add to the carling to shift the shifter and better reinforce the mounting holes. Finally, I put some blue tape on the deck, laid out the hole, "took a brave pill" and drilled a couple of big a*# holes in the deck. Using a hand saw I cut between the holes. Bla, bla, bla, ...look at the pictures.

The first photo shows the mock-up box, the second the deck cutout and the bezel split apart. The third has the bezel located around the shifter and the fourth the extender piece underneath that was added.