Building a New Rudder ... v 2.00

[Ben Diss]

A little 5 minute epoxy and some clamps and I'm ready for a break. Elapsed time: 30 minutes.

[greerdr]

Great pix!

R.C.Greer

[Ben Diss]

I started the shaping with the belt sander.

[Ben Diss]

After two more hours of shaping, sanding, measuring, sanding, etc., here's where I am.

[Ben Diss]

Time to bag it...with fiberglass that is. I'm using 2oz cloth and Hysol CL30. I usually use West but I happen to be out and it's snowing pretty good right now. This step took about 30 minutes.




Here's a shot of my fake autoclave. I point my space heater into the open side of a box to bring the temp of the bag up above 100f. The sandbag is to keep it flat against the glass plate underneath. Hopefully this will give me a nice straight trailing edge.

[Ben Diss]

It took about another two hours to shape, sand, fill, repeat ... until I like what I saw. It turns out I estimated the length added to the trailing edge wrong and this one turned about 1/4" short. I'll live with that. I also removed a little too much material on the top of the rudder and had to fill to make it fit. Anyway, here it is just prior to primer.

[Ben Diss]

Two coats of primer and I shot color. I picked my favorite color of Krylon and gave it two coats.

[Philip Whitley]

Great effort Ben, just what this site needs. Here in Nelson, New Zealand we have a rudder mould in two halves. We glass the two halves, place in a 4 mill stainless rod foam fill and sandwich together.

When cured, split the mould and there's a perfect rudder everytime. [:D]