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Repair of Old Delaminating Cabin Wood and Creating Floor Lighting

kapnkd

kapnkd
Some of the old laminated woods on the insides of our '73 E 32-II is finally showing some age and splitting. ...As a fix, I decided to create a simple wood trim strip to attach over it and cover the "sin".

Old Wood.jpg

I got ambitious and am taking it a step further to incorporate LED floor lighting underneath for night sailing. With a DMX controller and decoder system, I will have the ability to not only have red but any color one can think of (WHEN I finally get it all programed correctly!

I bought standard sized smooth baseboards and cut them down, then put a radius on the corners not to mention an inner side channel for an angled piece of aluminum channel available with LED systems. (This way, I can get a smooth color effect similar to neon without the dot blotches of color had I mounted them directly outward. Since the original wood sits about a half inch proud to the fiberglass floor/sole, it was easy to leave enough open space for the LED lights to reflect at 45 degrees downward.

Trim Strip Detail2.jpg Trim Strip Detail1.jpg

The results are excellent giving me my smooth neon color look. (Can't wait to get the whole thing finished up and straighten out the programming issues with the controller giving me a multitude of colors as well!! Fellow boaters at my club laughed a bit at first and asked IF I was going to get a disco ball, but now seeing the results, they're thinking about doing similar projects.

LED Floor Cabin Lighting.jpg
LED Floor Cabin Lighting2.jpg

(The last photo shows red in the main salon but with bright sunlight coming through the main salon hatch, it's a bit tough to see it.)

...YES, I am also putting strips on the Port side as well and will post more photos when the project is completed.
 
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toddster

Curator of Broken Parts
Blogs Author
Definitely get the disco ball!

About seven years ago, I spent what seemed like a lot of money on LED strip lighting. Even set up some in red at strategic locations and put in a separate dimmer for them. Then wasted a lot of time milling valence strips from mahogany to conceal and diffuse them, which never worked particularly well. Now all that is dirt cheap, programmable, and all sorts of diffusers and channels can be had to make them blend in with your setting.

Clearly, I should have just procrastinated that one.
 

Tin Kicker

Sustaining Member
Moderator
That looks GREAT and will be really nice feature at night.

fwiw - I found the original teak between the port lights of my 1985 32-3 is exactly the same color and shade as Acacia luxury vinyl floor planks at Home Depot and it will never ever delaminate.

Added July 7 7, 2019:
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kapnkd

kapnkd
Definitely get the disco ball!

About seven years ago, I spent what seemed like a lot of money on LED strip lighting. Even set up some in red at strategic locations and put in a separate dimmer for them. Then wasted a lot of time milling valence strips from mahogany to conceal and diffuse them, which never worked particularly well. Now all that is dirt cheap, programmable, and all sorts of diffusers and channels can be had to make them blend in with your setting.

Clearly, I should have just procrastinated that one.

...Exactly! The LED price drops and incredible new features made it an irresistible project to add into covering the bottoms of old cabin wood.

I went with an LTech controller that can handle 4 stations and then DMX 512 decoders (see photos). The decoders sit behind the starboard seat back along with my new found hidden storage and lock box.

Working with available LED connectors has been an educational experience as the solder less clips don’t make contact with wires OR LED strips as easily as advertised! Soldering those tiny 22 gauge wires is a real treat for a novice at it but the better way to go.

Controller and Decoder Locations.jpgLTech Controller.jpg
 
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