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Thread: Getting Ready for SHTP 2021

  1. #11
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    This was going to be a low-tech job, so I laid the 24-ounce triaxial fiberglass on, and starting painting/glopping resin on the cloth. I never mixed up too much resin/hardener as I was pretty sure I had enough to do the job, but I didn't want to waste it by having it kick off in the plastic mixing tub.

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    I did one side first. The rudder has 3/16 th's holes drilled in the end, and small screws were partially driven into them. The rudder hangs from those screws, which lie on the sawhorses you see. Well...DAMN...but one of them popped out and I had neglected to put a sheet of plastic on the ground under the project, so the rudder got a mess of dirt in it. I cleaned it up best I could with a brush and paper towels but there's some dirt in this layup. Dummy....one sheet of plastic would have saved quite a mess. All right, so I took the screws out and replaced them with some long nails, just shoved in the holes and that worked fine. This will still be plenty strong enough.

    Anyway, I have one of those wedged fiberglass laminating rollers:
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    So between using the dispo paintbrush to paint/glopp on the resin, and the roller to even the wet-out of the cloth, I just went at it for about an hour and 45 minutes.
    Last edited by AlanH; 12-27-2019 at 07:17 PM.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  2. #12
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    Honestly, it all turned out pretty well. Some hand-smoothing and pulling was needed here and there, but nothing awful.

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    The weave filled in pretty nicely...you see see some dirt in the layup....dangit!

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    I got everything laid down pretty tight by about 3:30

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    The upper part of the blade, that will be inside the cassette, is in the lower left corner of that last picture. I didn't pay a lot of attention to the bonding of the glass to the wood along the front edge of the upper part of the blade right there, as about an inch and a half of that will be cut out. Why? To add some balance to the blade. That will expose the width of the wood core of course, but I'll epoxy on a strip of 6 ounce cloth just to seal it
    Last edited by AlanH; 12-27-2019 at 07:00 PM.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  3. #13
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    Sep 2007
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    It's going to be COLD here tonight, and there's a lot of humidity in the air. This morning there was ice on the back window of Joans car, so I thought it might be wise to cover the rudder.....tarp tent! This should keep the dew off.

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    Looks cozy inside!

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    Joan revolts at having epoxy kicking off in the garage now, so all my glasswork has to be outside. It's supposed to get down to 37 deg. F tonight, so the epoxy might not cure all the way by morning. I'm sure it'll be hard by tomorrow afternoon, though.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  4. #14
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    Jul 2016
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    Bodfish, CA
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    Are you on schedule for the E-rudder race?

  5. #15
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    Here's a view of the cassette and original rudder that I built, deployed at the dock on George McKay's "Skye". This is the e-rudder we had for the LongPac.

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    See how the rudder body is cut back...the part that sits inside the cassette is smaller, fore-and-aft, than the underwater foil. The rudder drops into the cassette, but then it would wobble fore-and-aft, except that I made a "jammer"...another piece of the same wood that the rudder core is made out of. This is "jammed" into the back of the rudder, between the aft edge of the rudder blade and the inside-back of the cassette. That shoves the rudder forward and locks it into place. It should really have a retaining pin or something to keep it from falling out, but I made this cassette in a hurry.

    The body of the cassette is 3/8 plywood. The fore and aft parts of the box are cut from 2 x 4 doug fir. The initial fastening of the cassette box was done with a mess of s.s. 1.25 inch deck screws that I had lying around from.....building the deck on my house.

    Rudder pins..."pintles" are some 1/2 inch s.s. bolts I had lying around. The hinges on the cassette were laminated from alternating layers of 1/8 inch plywood and 10 oz fiberglass. They're 3/4 of an inch thick. The hinges are fiberglassed onto the plywood cassette with 1-inch fiberglass tape.

    I think the weak point in this assembly is the hinges. If I were to re-do this, I'd make them thicker...more material, through which those 1/2 inch bolts go. The other possible weak point is that the cassette box could possibly rip off the lower hinge. I think I would double up the fiberglassing that attaches it.

    The cassette for the rudder I'm making now will be very similar to this one, though I plan to make the hinges differently.

    George has replace the 2 x 6 and wood fittings to which the cassette is attached with a stainless steel post, and welded brackets. Also, this rudder wasn't originally made for Skye. I sort of started with measurements roughly the same size as my S-2 7.9's rudder, as the whole point was to do a practice run, before making the S-2's primary rudder. If I were making the rudder specifically for Skye, the cut-back would be further up the blade, so there wasn't that awkward-looking gap at the bottom of the cassette box.

    That said, this setup steered Skye in 15 knots of wind and some decent seas for a couple of hours - George and crew tried it out, even had the primary rudder tied off, 15 deg. off of centered.
    Last edited by AlanH; 12-27-2019 at 08:16 PM.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  6. #16
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    Sep 2007
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    Ants, I want to have the rudder and cassette ready to show off at the race, but I don't think I'll have the boat up there.

    I'm doing this whole project with backyard technology and tools.... no fancy carbon anything, no vacuum bagging, no nuthin'. I hope this proves to others that they can make a solid rudder in their garage!
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  7. #17
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    Sep 2007
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    It's un-tented today, late afternoon and it's tight but wow...sticky! The cold weather means the epoxy takes a LONG time to cure. It's now in the garage, where it will be plenty cold tonight, but probably 10 degrees warmer than outside.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  8. #18
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    Sep 2007
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    San Francisco Bay Area
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    Quote Originally Posted by AlanH View Post
    It's un-tented today, late afternoon and it's tight but wow...sticky! The cold weather means the epoxy takes a LONG time to cure. It's now in the garage, where it will be plenty cold tonight, but probably 10 degrees warmer than outside.
    It's kicked off....the rudder looks really good, there' s tight bonding over the entire surface. This will be ~Strong~.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  9. #19
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    Sep 2007
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    I cut off the flash today. Some of the epoxy still hasn't kicked so it's staying in the garage. However, the blade now weighs 22.2 pounds. That will change a little bit, as I'm cutting off some of the stock to add balance and adding some 6 ounce glass and epoxy to seal the back edge and the cut-back. However, "a little bit" is pretty surely only about a pound +/- .

    i finally spent some money on this project... $13.77 at Home Depot for a 1/4 sheet of exterior glue ACX plywood.

    The basic "box" for the cassette is made. It's blocks cut from free scrap doug fir 2 x 4's from the local lumberyard, 3/8 th's plywood and a bunch of the leftover s.s. exterior deck screws from building the deck on the back of the house a few years ago.

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    Attached Images Attached Images  
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

  10. #20
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    Sep 2007
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    This morning I tried the fit of the rudder into the cassette. Oops. The plywood has a little bend to it, and the rudder wouldn't go in. So I took all the deck screws out of one side, and cut roughly 1/4-inch strips from the same 2 x 4 to add to make it a little bit wider. That got cut, glue'd with TiteBond wood glue, and stuck in place with a couple of brads, and then the cassette was screwed back together again. I then rounded off the edges with the sander and generally smoothed things up. The outer corners at the top and bottom of the cassette were rounded off a bit, as I'll be wrapping 4-inch glass tape 'round the entire box.

    I mixed up some microballoons in epoxy and made a "fairing" spooge.

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    I'm not sure that "fairing" is really the right term, but "smoothing" it is, for sure. I mixed it up until the stuff was about the consistency of cool peanut butter and then used a flexible nylon spatula to distribute it over the underwater part of the blade. This is the first side, the other side will get done in a couple of days. The goal here is to fill in any little holes in the weave, smooth over the worst of the bumps, and call it good. It'll get a cursory sanding with 120 grit, and that's enough for an emergency rudder. There's no point in fairing the stuff that will be inside the cassette, so I didn't.
    Last edited by AlanH; 01-27-2020 at 09:23 AM.
    1968 Selmer Series 9 B-flat and A clarinets
    1962 Buesher "Aristocrat" tenor saxophone
    Piper One Design 24, Hull #35; "Alpha"

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