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Every fibre of my being wants to scrap it and start again. Especially now that I have the measurements perfect, I can just duplicate most parts. This time, I will use a thicker inner panel, and I'll biscuit join it, and it will be beautiful.

The only thing that's stopping me is that I'd have to burn through another dozen yards of my reclaimed mahogany. I only have a few dozen feet of it left, and I still want to replace sooo many things in the cockpit (table, pedestal top, pedestal panels, footrail...).

I still recommend cutting out the back side of the joint and resizing either the panel and/or the joint to fit. Reinstall with screwed in battens for a serviceable assembly. All woodworkers screw up - experience just makes us better at turning these screw-ups into new features
So, if your groove joint that holds the panel is 1/2 inch deep, cut it back revealing the panel so there is about a 3/4 inch shoulder. Make this shoulder almost flush with the panel. Cut 5/4 inch wide battens and install on the shoulder.
If the panel is too small, clean up the edges of the panel with a router trim bit or a table saw, glue on material to bring the panel to the needed size, sand/finish, and reinstall in a thin bed of stretchable caulk or butyl tape.
End result is minimal new wood needed and everything fitting correctly.

An advantage of Robert's way is that you can stain or finish the panel right to the edges before assembly, so you won't have unfinished slivers peeking through the edges when the panel moves, which you otherwise might.

You can also put small (1/8" - 1/4") compressible rubber spacers in (say, four per side = 8 pieces) when you assemble it that will hold the panel centred, but still allow movement.

I like to use pocket screws (drilled at an angle, I have made a drill guide block for this, but you can buy them too) for putting these frames together, because you can disassemble them, or tighten them later if you need to, and the screws in this case would be on the interior. They can also be filled over if you prefer the look.

experience just makes us better at turning these screw-ups into new features

Hence is derived the expression "it's not a screw-up, it's rustic!



(Yah, 'cause I've never said that)!

seahouse wrote: Hence is derived the expression "it's not a screw-up, it's rustic!

I've never heard this expression out loud, but I sure heard it in my head a lot while making this. In my case, the word was 'character'.

As in: 'Oops!' Ah well. That'll add character.'