Rudder Revisited

 I am so glad I bought the angle grinder. It makes fast work of what was a slow job with the oscillating sander and uses a LOT less sanding disks!

Yesterday I finally got around to playing with this new toy. If you have never used and angle  grinder to sand be VERY AWARE you can destroy your piece in a heart beat as it will quite literally tear it up in a tremendously fast hurry. The good news was I wanted to get the cracks tore out and they went really deep as the pictures will show so I had time to get used to it.  The guy who sold me this boat said it was not in that tornado.Maybe it was not. I'm not calling him a lair  but something pretty darned big and this boat collided some where along the line. Part of it is abuse from not having backing plates on it. Seriously as you can see from the pics especially in the chain plate area, the damage is just to obvious from lack of backing plates. The good news is red oak is fairly cheap around here and I'm buying more this month! Just to get started I bought one disk of 36 and one disk of 50. What I got done yesterday in a matter of a few hours used to take all day and a huge pile of sanding disk.
Without further adue here's the pics . I forgot to take some before I started applying the resin but you can still see how deep I had to go to get all of the crack safely out of the way.

 These spots I posted in original post I think.

This next series of shots are from grinding out the  cracks to make sure it is done right.

 

The fiberglass hanging over the edge is not me just being lazy. I am going to have to fill in the gaps which are of a significant size. The cloth is to have something as a back for the thickened epoxy. Yes, I'm actually taking the plunge and using honest to gosh epoxy instead of poly resin for this.  Planning on adding micro fibers to it for strength.

 

 I was planning on having the next part of sanding off the blush and getting another layer of resin on it until I learned that you can destroy a rubber backing plate on a grinder by expecting it to flex to much.It is either that or I hit something and did not realize it until much lager. I was doing a flat part of boat when I did this!

 More "gel coat cracks" At this point based on what I Have seen, I'm NOT trusting it. If it is a crack, it gets sanded and if it is deep enough to be in the fiberglass, it gets sanded down til it is gone  or gouged out and filled in with epoxy and microfibers.

Bow and starboard side of boat.

I got the stress cracks sanded out here.

This is what is left on port side in one area after a bruise was sanded down.

This used to  be the chain plate area.

Curve of boat going from cock pit to top of cabin.

Front deck

Starboard chain plate area. My big feet are intentionally in photo so you can see how far the cracks go.

                                                   Can you say BACKING PLATES!






                                                 My son has a sense of humor.

 

 Sail Safe but sail!