Front Dash replacement
 

The dash on my boat is sort of decorative wood. I want to move the gauges around so I will need to create a new dashboard for the boat (the boat is styled like a donzi classic 18). I had been thinking about replacing this with another piece of wood but locating a board I like that is 1x8" & 8ft long is proving to be a challenge. The shape of the dash is kinda like this.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]554772[/ATTACH]without the rocker switches and about 8ft long, spanning the whole width of the boat. There is essentially no fiberglass behind this board there is about 3" on the left and right sides and about 2" on top, otherwise it is opened up for easy access.

The current wood doesn't really go with the boat decor and I would like to replace this with some sort of strong plastic type material or some nice looking metal (I can use wood as a last resort and put some glossy paint over it, I may even be able to bondo up the existing gauge holes so I can reuse what I have now (I want to move the new gauges where I want them) ...but I would prefer not to.

Any recommendations?

Thanks!

- scott -

I went with engine turned Stainless for my Magnum
Pictures do not do it justice.

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...pse96iiagd.jpg

I drew the panels up in CAD and sent the files to them, they came back perfect, absolutely perfect.

http://www.fpmmetals.com/

This is what I started with:
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps5605f929.jpg

When I did my 22 dash I made a template out of cardboard. Then I bought a piece of 1/8" aluminum. I layed out the dash on the aluminum. When I needed to make the holes I used 2 1/8" hole saw for the small gauges and it worked perfect. I used 3 1/4" for the large gauges but had to use a drum sander to make it a bit bigger. For the switches I was going to use a dremel but had a buddy do it on a cnc machine. The nice thing of the aluminum is that it's light and easy to cut. But rigid enough to span that opening and not bow while being thin. Stainless would work well just hard to cut out on your own. Both of which you can paint or powder coat as you would like.

That's awesome murfman! It sounds like both of you put a lot of work into this, definitely starting to sound like a winter project