Sunday, August 16, 2015

Rudder not so temporary now

Got all of the glue chiseling done under the wales last night.  Got it done in less than two hours comfortably seating in a rolling chair.  Only took 2 glasses of whiskey :-)  Trailer height thing is working well.

The rudder is now also a stand up straight project.  I dove into finding the permanent locations for the pintles, gudgeons and drilling the holes for the throughout bolts to hold them.  After reading about the PDR Duck fleet in the Texas 200 losing their rudders and why, no way i was going to just screw them on.

Once I had it all mounted, I found that the inside of the rudder was hitting the lower pintle bracket and screw head, and I had to do a little more shaping to make it clear.  Not a problem at all, it's not on the immersed sections, and there's plenty of meat there.  Just one of those little details you find need attending as you put stuff together for real.

Here is is all mounted up as it will sit for posterity.

You might notice my tiller hole is looking a bit big.  I'll blank off the lower portion with a plate after I get my uphaul and possible downhaul figured out.  If I'm smart I'll just take Jim's advice and cast a chunk of lead into the rudder for a downhaul.

Jim specs a piece of timber 1-1/2 x 1-1/2 rounded to 1" diameter at the helmsman end.  I didn't have anything long enough left in that size, but i did have some 1x2 and 1/4" marine ply.  I just laminated a layer of ply on both sides of the 1x2, and ended up at the right dimension.  It's plenty strong, and has the added benefit that the mounting bolts are a lot less likely to split it out now.  Mounting the tiller is when i found I had to raise the hole in order to get enough bearing on the headstock for the rudder.  Barely enough room with my backing block for the upper gudgeon.  I could have flipped that pintle and gudgeon and gotten another 1-1/2" clearance, but i want to be able to just unbolt the tiller and lift out the rudder assembly.  Tiller itself keeps it from jumping up and out.




I'm going to end up trenching the top of the tiller for the up haul to make it under the top of the hole in the transom.  Once I'm inside the boat it can jump up on top of the tiller to a jam cleat.  I'll drop a plate on top of the tiller so it acts like a long fairlead several inches into the boat.  should work well.  I left that bevel on the rudder end of the tiller to drill at an angle up into the trench.  the bevel allows the rudder to come up a little past horizontal before the till acts as a stop.

Took the tiller back off and did a little shaping "until pleasing to the hand"




Now that this is all laid out, time to figure out the motor mount.

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