Having decided to repair the rudder step one was to get the main stock rebonded. To do this I embedded two pieces of spruce. Rather than sand down the prior paint I decided to just pull off the carbon skin. This pulled the top layer of the spruce too leaving it pitted and rough so I filled the whole top. With it looking like a rudder again I sawed it into two pieces.... This is in order to work towards the final aim of both restoring the shape and also making the foil a LOT stronger than it was before. Aims are: Remove that big hole. It was way too big! Instead bond the down-haul into a smaller hole. Turn the foil into an I beam with carbon cross sections Thicken up with carbon skin from plan 1 Cutting the foil in half was a prep step towards step 2. To finish up I added two layers of carbon with an ash strip (about 1/8" thick) to replace the wood removed in the cut. Hopefully can finish up fairing tomorrow and get the foil skinned...
I'm hoping to finish this on part iv and do so this coming week but we'll see. The leading edge looked good but the rope fluffed up on sanding. The fluff sat down with a little epoxy but still not quite convinced by the penetration into the dyneema. Feels tough though so i'm going to go ahead and skin over it and we'll see in the long term. And epoxy and clamp it down again.
Horrible job. Three back breaking sessions. Not the prettiest result but should be water proof. Another coat would be pretty but I've added enough weight already and no one will see it so we're done!! Took a bit of time to fill gaps under the stringers, especially at the front. Initially tried using a plunger applicator then switched to using my fingers to make the fillets, just too many awkward angles in the bow. I have a theory that I over faired them (Dave did the same too I think) because I used a batten across one direction of curve. The compound curve however has tension in two directions.
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