Hi there, Wes.

Here's something I've done lately that you might consider taking to the next step.

I wanted to dress up the day hatch as well, so I simply took the cutout from the opening cut for the day hatch and epoxied it to the plastic lid of a 4" deck plate. Before doing that, I cut matching holes for the fingers as you can see in the photo, and I even got pretty lucky in orienting the grain to that of the deck.

The next step would be to simply epoxy the rim to the underside of the deck rather than on top. That way you will be able to make the screw lid (with the cutout attached) flush with the deck.

I couldn't do that this time because I didn't think of it until I was already cutting the hole in the deck. There would have been too much of a gap, because I had used a 1/4" pilot hole to start.

If you cut the hatch using the same methods as cutting the larger hatches, I think this could turn out pretty.

Cheers,

Pete Roszyk,
in Snohomish