Sailing: The art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going nowhere at great expense.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Rudder Fix

So after the heart ache of knowing that all of this rudder business could have been avoided if I had been more aware of what was going on at the lift, I got down to repairing it.  First I removed the rudder assembly from the boat.  The heal came off with no issues but the head was on a tapered rudder post.  It took some PB Blaster and a lot of hammering to get it free.  I brought it home and started to strip off the fiberglass to expose the cast bronze head fitting.  It was through bolted in 3 places with the nuts recessed into the rear of the wood rudder.   The slot was then sealed up with a resin/wood filler mixture.  Once all the bolts were extracted I could pull off the cast piece.

I could sight down and tell it was both bent and twisted.  I took the bend out with a hydraulic press.  This brought the piece half way back into true.  The twist was proving too difficult to get out and I was worried about breaking the cast piece.  I settled on making sure the head was square and true to the rudder and letting the tail twist off the 1/16th of an inch.  I set the piece in thickened epoxy and bolted and clamped it.



I will sand and fill where needed and fill the nut voids with thickened epoxy.  I will take it back to the boat this weekend to re-insert and allow me to square up the tiller.  The head has almost certainly moved as well and will need to be re-centered.  Once that is all done I will seal the wood and cover in fiber glass, fairing to a level finish ready for paint.  All that can happen at home again during the next week before i re-install for good the following weekend.  2 years ago this job would have terrified me.  Now, a little knowledge and a lot of epoxy goes along way.












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