Repairing the rudder

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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:
  1. Remove that big hole. It was way too big! Instead bond the down-haul into a smaller hole.
  2. Turn the foil into an I beam with carbon cross sections
  3. 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 this coming week and painted the following week so it's ready to use again. 


Its worth noting that the original skin is an interesting material. The Interlux Perfection paint is amazingly hard and flexible.




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