Main hull and rudder progress

There are some pictures in here from last week as well because I left my camera at the work-shop and didn’t realize it until over half-way home.

I’ll start with the main hull (which now has the deck completely laminated).  We cut out the anchor well and the hole over the bow-web that serves as a location for the jib furler (the halyard runs through this hole).

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Part of me wishes we could have cut this out long ago because of how much nicer it is to access the bow interior.  We chose to not cut this out until the exterior laminate was on as the shape was a complicated one and we wanted to use the cut-out as the hatch.

With somewhat easier access to the very tip of the bow interior, I was able to finally finish taping.  The forward bunk bulkhead and keel area from that bulkhead to the tip of the bow are now laminated.  Once that was done, I added the extra foam required in this area, taped it, and then positioned the carbon bob-stay eye.  Dad stayed outside the hull with the template where I marked the location and angle, and I stayed inside to position the part.  Once we were satisfied with the location (both fore/aft and angle), it was bogged into place and taped – including the remaining foam above it.  You can also see the HD foam just above the bunk where the trailer U-bolt will be.  Very glad about finishing this part, as now we just need to make some flanges and then put the other half of the bunk-top in place.  Checked off a number of tasks in the plan book by doing this.  Very pleased.

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Here’s the eye from the ouside

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We were running a little low on the Applied Poleramic epoxy we’ve been using for this project.  I put in an order for what might actually be our last batch (fingers crossed) but decided we wanted to make some progress on the rudder blank in the mean time.  Went down to West Marine and purchased a gallon of WEST Epoxy and Fast hardener.  We decided we’d use the WEST Epoxy for “seperate” parts (rudder, daggerboard and maybe rudder cassette) so neither of us worry about bonding issues.

Made the HD core for the rudder, routed a radius on all four courners, and laminated the proper fabrics to it and pulling as tight as possible with the peel-ply.

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This method worked fine, and there were no bubbles in the resulting laminate.

While the core was curing, we set to shaping the rudder blank.  Took turns with the 6″ random-orbital electric sander and the “short” (14″) longboard.  I think we achived a pretty good result.

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Here is the top edge

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and the bottom edge

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We also decided to drill the holes for the G10 bushes on the top now, so they’re easier to locate after laminating.

After shaping it, we traced the location of the UD rebate and attacked the beautiful shape with a mini planer and longboard.

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Here is the piece after being rebated with the finished core laying on top

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Next was cutting out the foam in the rudder blank and bogging the core in place.  This was a bit of an ordeal since once the foam is cut out, the rudder becomes extremely unstable.  I took some of the Raptor Copula pins and attached a piece of foam (with tape to act as releasing surface) to the top to help stabalize the shape.

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Looking back at the task… if doing this again (and we will since there is still a daggerboard to shape, and probably an emergency rudder to keep on board “just in case”), I would seriously debate centering the core into the foam blank BEFORE shaping it, only because of how unstable it was.  Either way, a lot of the shaping goes to “waste” since you rebate the foam so much for the UD carbon.  There will need to be some building up to do after laminating and then re-shaping.  We’ll see how long it takes and then evaluate how we do the daggerboard.

Here is the first layer of fabric wrapping around the rudder

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We ended up using one of the G10 holes with a piece of tube as a pivot to keep the rudder off the work surface.  For the bottom end, dad stuck a long, heavy guage, needle into it and tied string to the end.  This was then attached to the ladder to raise the rudder completely off the surface.  We held it up by hand to “work” the fabric and peel-ply, then suspended it and finished smooting the trailing edge.  Looks like it will be ok…

Later in the evening, I peeled off half of the peel-ply and laminated all the UD carbon to one side.  Can’t really see much of the tapering that I put on the ends, but it’s there… Can also see the fiberglass fabric hanging off the trailing edge – but looks like no bubbes!

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Plan tomorrow is to hopefully finish the laminating the rudder and do some more tasks on the bow interior (maybe flanges, maybe the bow-web bulkhead, etc, etc).

Decided to use a 4″ screw-in deck plate for access to the bow-web area instead of a piece of ply screwed into the bulkhead.  Was going to use a 6″ plate like other areas, but seems too big once you include how far the tape will go onto the bulkhead.

Have bright orange System Three LPU paint for the rudder and daggerboard.  That’s my real motivation for completing the rudder – want to see how bright it is…. 🙂

Also ordered carbon fabric for the rudder cassette and the traveler (building the carbon traveler) as well as aluminium for traveler tapping plate and proper plastic spacer for rudder cassette.