More Work on the Rudder

Last week I glued the rudder "cheeks" in place.  The cheeks reinforce the rudder at the point where the tiller will be applying side forces.  You can see the slot for the tiller--wish I could add an arrow pointing to it, but I think it's obvious.

Rudder and Tiller

Here's a shot of the rudder with the tiller in its slot.  I have done most of the sanding on the rudder--a little more and the fiberglassing can begin.  Fiberglass will be applied below the cheeks and down the rudder sides, and then curve out onto the bottom plate.

Bottom Plate Fillet

In this closer shot of the fillet you can see a few lighter areas where I added fairing compound to any low spots.  This joint will be under a lot of pressure under sail and I want to make sure the fiberglass has an even, smoothly-curved surface to adhere to.  It is suggested in the manual that the bottom plate can be used as a step for boarding the boat, but I'm a little leery of that idea.

Wetting-out Coat, Side One

This morning I added fiberglass cloth to one side of the rudder and applied the "wetting-out" epoxy coat.  The wetting-out coat is to make sure that all the cloth is evenly "wetted" and that there are no spots that are starved for epoxy or that have too much epoxy.  I stood the rudder up temporarily to apply epoxy to the bottom plate.

I absolutely have to apply the next coat (fill coat) before the wetting-out coat has a chance to harden.  It can no longer be sticky, but must still be "rubbery."  This will happen in about eight hours or so.  The fill coat must be applied at that time to ensure a good chemical bond.  Chemical bonding is best, but a mechanical bond can also be achieved by sanding first.  In this case, though, sanding would damage the fiberglass cloth, which is barely below the surface of the epoxy. So it is imperative that I apply the fill coat at the proper time.   The third (gloss) coat can be applied after the fill coat cures (with sanding) but to get the best possible adhesion I will also try to apply it when I can still get a chemical bond.

It's hard to tell from this shot, but on what is at the moment the upper left corner of the bottom plate, the fiberglass cloth does not quite reach the corner, so I added a little patch.  I'll correct the template before I cut the 'glass for the other side.  Also you can see some black streaks where I got Magic Marker ink on the cloth that was applied to rudder.  I'll have to be more careful about that in future, but it does not matter here because I do not plan on a "bright finish," i.e., it will be painted instead of varnished.