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i am making a rudder

Much sanding today, and then fairing compound on one side. I think there's a light at the end of this tunnel.
 
It's been two days of fairing compound, waiting, and sanding... The important stuff is really smooth. The fore and aft edges of the rudder, above the waterline, not so much, but that doesn't really matter.

Tuesday night I go to my friend Len's house and we grind, shine and weld the gudgeons.
 
Welding night at Len's place. He has a new toy, I should have taken a picture of it. It's a 3-D 6 cutting head CNC metal shaper, complete with containment hood. woooo. For the price of a new tank of argon gas and two boxes of stainless welding rod, we did this....

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What amazed me was that the contraction of the side bracing pieces after welding, actually slightly bent the thick transverse piece that everything is welded to. That chunk is 3/8'ths stainless and it's only about 3 inches wide. It's pretty bluidy rigid.
 
Welding and wine, why not? What I wouldn't give to have my own garage.
That's beautiful work. I tried to get the hang of TIG welding stainless when I was at TechShop. Fail. The upside is I can now spend inordinate amounts of time wandering the docks and admiring good welds that I used to take for granted.
If your e-rud fails, I'm pretty sure it won't be Len's fault!
 
Lanikai said:
Welding and wine, why not? What I wouldn't give to have my own garage.
That's beautiful work. I tried to get the hang of TIG welding stainless when I was at TechShop. Fail. The upside is I can now spend inordinate amounts of time wandering the docks and admiring good welds that I used to take for granted.
If your e-rud fails, I'm pretty sure it won't be Len's fault!
Click to expand...

Those are actually the primary rudder gudgeons. I'm taking a page from a couple of other folks e-rudders when it comes to putting the gudgeons on my cassette. They will be plywood and carbon with a s.s. inset for the pin bushing. That will be another thread.

Around the corner from Lens welding area, which is separate from the machine shop area, which is separate from the extra-metal-storage/grinding wheel/CNC/electric guitars area... is an ENORMOUS refrigerated wine storage locker. It's HUGE, like 200+ bottles. There are cases of bottles on the floor. Lens wife, Kathy used to co-own a restaurant and they have friends who get them to go in on cases of upscale wine. Kathy told me that one of their New Years Resolutions is to "drink more". sheesh.
 
AlanH said:
Those are actually the primary rudder gudgeons.
Click to expand...

Ah, yes, duh. After seeing some of the more recent posts I did think "gee, that's a lot of work for an awfully stout e-rudder" without giving it further thought (like reading the thread's title).
 
Two coats of one-part polyurethane went on above the waterline this weekend. I'll probably do one more. Still up...final sanding below the waterline, esp. the trailing edge.

I discovered that the tiller I made is about a foot shorter than I need it to be. OK, I now have a dandy emergency tiller. It took maybe 30 minutes to shape, no big deal.
 
Bottom paint went on, today. I got a quart of West Marine's ablative paint in black. I'm stunned. The rudder is nowhere near as smooth as I thought it was. I sanded that thing and sanded it and sanded it. I filled the weave twice, and sanded. Damn.
 
AlanH said:
Bottom paint went on, today. I got a quart of West Marine's ablative paint in black. I'm stunned. The rudder is nowhere near as smooth as I thought it was. I sanded that thing and sanded it and sanded it. I filled the weave twice, and sanded. Damn.
Click to expand...

I guess I'm going to sail with it as it is this season, as I've already submitted my handicap rating application listing this rudder. However, the boat will go in for it's biannual haulout in December and I will strip the bottom paint off of rudder and fair some more while the yard works on the hull. I'd rather not miss another race.

Today the tiller fitting went on and I knocked out a somewhat crude tiller, but it will get me back on the water. I also sanded down the bushings I bought , as they were a touch too big, and tapped them into the gudgeons. The above-the-water parts got a final coat of polyurethane. And finally, I made an emergency tiller.

We are getting very close to putting the thing on.
 
What's left is a last coat of bottom paint, and then installing the rudder gudgeons. I can't put on bottom paint in the garage, so this weather is not helping...
 
The rudder has been on the boat for two-plus months, just sitting there while I recovered from rotator cuff surgery. This weekend I FINALLY got the bushings on. oooo. smooooth twisty-turny and no CLUNK.

I'll *FINALLY* find out if wiggling the tiller makes the boat turn while on the SSS cruise-in.
 
It worked, and in moderate winds was pretty light. When overpowered on a broad reach, it does load up. Big surprise. The lower gudgeon bushing needs re-thinking and the tiller and tillerhead functioned fine but could be stiffer. I might replace the aluminum tiller-head with a s.s. one, 2-3 inches longer for more tillerhead / tiller contact surface.

Otherwise, a success!
 
AlanH said:
It worked, and in moderate winds was pretty light. When overpowered on a broad reach, it does load up. Big surprise. The lower gudgeon bushing needs re-thinking and the tiller and tillerhead functioned fine but could be stiffer. I might replace the aluminum tiller-head with a s.s. one, 2-3 inches longer for more tillerhead / tiller contact surface.

Otherwise, a success!
Click to expand...

I admire people who can do stuff that I have to write big checks for. Nice job Alan!
 
The rudder has been on the boat for a year and she REALLY needs a haulout but I'm short of boat bucks. So I pulled the rudder off the boat...blew off the tunicates and algae, realized that there was essentially no bottom paint on the rudder and decided to bring it home. After a good scrub with a scotchbrite pad and a once-over with 180 grit sandpaper I realized that...wow, it's nowhere near as fair as I remembered.

ugh.

I ground off a couple of places where the topsides polyurethane was cracking and re-coated. Today I took a close look at some cracks near the top of the rudder. One is surface stuff, I just ground off the polyurethane and used some epoxy and microballoons to smooth it out. I'll sand it pretty tomorrow. However, the same crack above the upper gudgeon is actually a crack in the triaxial fiberglass. I will need to take a hard look at that soon. It could be that the very top of the rudder needs another wrap of triaxial.

I discovered that the 6 ounce glass I put on the bottom had pulled away from the bottom of the wood, so I ground that off and laid on some more 6-ounce in spooge. It dried out for two weeks so it's probably fine. The epoxy is kicking off right now.

And while I was at it, I made a new tiller. I also prettified up the e-tiller. Projects
 
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