Sliding door panels

[fred1diver]

I am wondering what material to make sliding door panels to close off my cabinets, I would appreciate your input please
At the moment we are thinking dark smoke plexiglass (acrylic) but we are open to suggestions for other materials.
the tracks we currently have are ¼” wide but we can always get thinner if a better material is found.

 

[dLj]

What you said above is the commonly used material. How tight on the 1/4" are the tracks? Would 1/4" thick slide or bind up?

Just make sure the thickness you get slides well in the slots but doesn't have too much slop...

dj

p.s. How are you putting the panels in? They may have a deeper slot on the top so you slide the panel up, clear the bottom, then drop down into the bottom slot. Depends on how you are making yours.

 

[fred1diver]

The tracks are made for ¼” so it shouldn’t bind, yes there is a deeper upper one to accommodate the installation

 

[capta]

On Skipping Stone, each cabinet in the galley behind the work space, had two sliding smoked plexy doors with teak finger holes (available everywhere). Easy to clean and never came open on their own. There must be an install kit, as I've seen similar systems on many boats.
I find it interesting to see so many "offshore" cruising boats for sale with cubbies without doors, especially in the galley. Either they are useless storage spaces in rough weather, or the boat just wasn't really designed for offshore sailing in the first place. It is the small things that separate a boat designed for offshore cruising from those designed to fill a financial market niche, but advertised as an offshore cruiser.

 

[fred1diver]

My original galley had sliding panels, but we redid the whole galley layout, we can’t wait to get it all done, and the cubbies along side the settees only had a long fiddle, so we are planing to add sliding doors there as well