New Rudder part 1, Not to shabby for an Ol' Woman

 I want to start this page with a THANK YOU to my son who is letting me monopolize his cam corder for all these photos! I could not be posting this blog with out it.


As it turns out I have  the wood to build a new rudder after all. Who knew?
There is  part of an old  interior solid core door in the pile out side that is actually in good shape. and enough large chunks of 3/4 inch plywood to put the two together and make 1 1/2" thick boards. I was going to use foam board to make it the required 1 1/2 inches to avoid having to piece meal the other side together. It occurs that shaving all that foam is not going to be fun plus the ply wood and door wood going in different directions, if I remember anything from engineering tips I've picked up over the years, it seems to me having them going perpendicular to each other makes it stronger structurally. All you engineering guys,  feel free to jump in here if I am wrong.

BONDO ISSUE
I did some research on the "BONDO' issue. Turns out they have a marine grade polyester available  that come with hardener for a LOT less money then the epoxy. Google  Bondo® Marine Products™ Boatyard Resin. or go to   JamestownDistributors.com/Bondo.   Yes, I know I'm gonna catch some slack about this. Why am I doing it?
1 I'm the one paying the bills on this boat.  I can go the polyester route and be in the water or I can wait to save up for epoxy.
2. This is about sailing not sitting here waiting to save money.
This ol' gal sitting in my driveway is made of the same stuff and she is 40 years old so I figure this rudder should last a  while especially if I take care to do it right. I am going to do the thing where you over drill holes by making them a size or two larger then you will need  for your bolts,  fill them with the resin, let it harden,  then  drill the hols to the proper size.  to protect the wood.  
If any one who disagrees strongly enough, would care to relieve me of that responsibility and take over the in pocket financing I'm good with that. Just go to the contact page and send your donation to the email address through paypal. Enough epoxy to do the rudder is going to cost about 100.00 by the time it is all said and done, Shipping is really expensive). Doing it with the boat yard bondo is less the 25.00. That leaves money for other things, like bottom paint and tint. I'll use the money I was going to spend on bondo for paint. Nuff said?

Paint for rudder. I think I'm going with  the marine grade RustOleum  for the same reasons. It's not what I WANT to do but, it will get me in the water faster.It's not like scrubbing ff a 22 foot hull was going to be hard work if it is kept done. It wl be a good excuse to go swimming.


Tinting epoxy. I was cruising the Jamestown site and noticed a page for tinting epoxy. I think it was west epoxy they used for this. According to that page you can use plain old fashioned CHEAP  tempera paint to tint that particular epoxy. Hello CHEAP  custom colors! I called up Bondo to see if it works with their product. That particular office I needed for tech was closed since today is Precedents day. I left a message  so will find out tomorrow.

The New Rudder

Yes cutting this on the table saw would be faster and easier. The guys are not available today, I'm NOT using a table saw until I KNOW how to do it right. This is one of those days where I NEED to do something on this boat TODAY or I think I'll go nuts, so for now I'm using what I have as far as tools, I did this with a felt tip, a small hand square, a straight edge and a Dremel.

Board one side one. This is the wood from the interior solid core door. I have the area wood to be removed marked.

 I did not think about photos until I had done a part of it but here it is, after marking a line along the board to show where to stop removing wood, I used the cutting  wheels  to put grooves in the  wood. Yeah, it did more burning then cutting but it still got the wood removed so I'm not kicking about it. In hind sight, if I had it to do over again I think I would spring for the extra money for a saw blade to fit the Dremel. They have the one that fits as an after market thing I found at  Ace for 16 dollars and change. I seriously though about it. The 5 pack of EZ lock cutting blades with the mandrel was 12 something. The refill pack of 12 is 22 and change. The reason I decided to go with the EZ lock was, I only had 20 dollars to put into this. I was scared that  my hand would slip and  I would break the metal blade.That would put me dead in the water.  I did not want that to happen.  The regular fiberglass cutting wheel that came with the Dremel. will work but they broke a lot faster then  the EZ lock blades.  I don't know if it is me or what, but some only lasted a couple of minutes then disintegrated. Probably a user problem but that is what happened.  I think it is because the EZ Lock are thicker plus they have some sort of coating on them the regular cutting blades do not have. They are also larger so I could make deeper cuts.  I  wore out two EZ lock blades on this side but none of them broke so it was a good investment. I'm seriously thinking about getting the metal mini saw blades any way to have on hand. Seems like they will come in handy for other things I have not thought of yet. .

 I started from the other end but I wanted to show a shot of just having a long line of cuts made ready for the next step.

You HAVE to be VERY careful at this point to not take off more then you want as once cut you can't put it back. Board extenders just do not work in this application. Under kill is the word for this,. I left a LOT to be removed at the next step.The key to this step is KEEP IT ALIGNED WITH THE ANGLE YOU SET ON THE END AND DO NOT PUSH THE BLADE. LET THE BLADE DO IT'S JOB AND GO SLOW!!!!!!!  Do NOT I REPEAT,  DO NOT try to cut it off even all the way to the line you marked since you will cut to deep and have removed more then you want  by the time you grind it even or have a deep ridge to grind down which messes with your line as well!!!!!.

Looks really rough, but progress is progress. See what I mean about not taking it down all the way at the line?

The next step is the grinder to get it smoothed out some. It took off the high spots and removed the nasty brown burns marks of which there were plenty! I tried using just the grinder to take off all the wood in one spot just to see what would happen. It wore out a brand new grinder roll in about two minutes and did not cover that much ground so I went back to using the  cutting disk and doing this in two steps..

Before grinding on left, After grinding on right. At far right is  the start of where I had already started sanding it down to get it even.

Shot showing all four steps in progress, from left to right, initial cuts made, tips cut off with cutting wheel, grinding done and sanded closer to flat. You are going to  notice on the far right edge the wood cracked. I got in to big of a hurry to get the edge to a knife sharp point and  did not have that part of the wood supported properly when I put the sander to it. The good news is the epoxy covers a multitude of sins. It will have back pressure from the other board once it is laminated so it is going to be OK.

Making serious progress.



 Final shots of board rough sanded

 YIPPEE!!!!!

 Now all I have to do on this edge,  is the final sanding. Yes, it has a few places I went a tad to deep. For my first time, I think I did really good. Just so I do not break it on the edge like I did on the end,  I am going to wait until I have the two sides laminated before I put a knife edge on it.  The small  dips will even out then as well as the resin will fill in any places I miss.
The guys are tired of hearing the Dremel and sander going at all hours while I'm doing this so hopefully that will motivate them into getting the table saw out in the morning. LOL 

Ladies, if I can do this so can you . It took me all day but that was working on it for a while, going to do something else while I took a break and let the air clear from all the dust, then going back to it.  If I had clocked my time on this I'd say maybe three or four hours actual time working on it. Everything I used on this I bought at either wally world, ace hardware or  a home improvement store like Lowe's or Home depot, .so it is doable. That puts it with in keeping of the theme of this blog about boat work using locally available materials.   WEAR EYE PROTECTION AND A BREATHING MASK!  They are cheap at any local wally world or home improvement center! If you don't your not going to like the fact you keep wanting to blow your nose! This stuff is nasty! 

 Not to bad for an old woman huh? 

UPDATE on The Toy

I decided since the Bondo marine resin is so cheap to give the wood to my son for his PDR and just go ahead and resin the out side of  hull # 1. According to the Bondo people I should be able to order it from one of the local auto part houses here locally so we will see. I get not available due to location a lot in regard to marine grade stuff a LOT around here in south west Oklahoma. Not enough demand is what they say.  OK I can see that. This is a land locked area.  They have quotas and profit per square foot of floor space and stuff like that to deal with .  If nothing else I'll order it from James town and let the locals lose the profit.No biggie. 


 Get Brave, build  or rebuild a boat and go sailing.