3226Hrs – Two Big Rudders Hanging On A Boat

Some good progress made today and ‘Gleda’ now looks even more shipshape, albeit temporarily.

My challenge today was to get the rudders temporarily into position so that I could a) check the fit and b) mark the positions of the rope hinges so that they can be machined.

I mentioned the other day how heavy the rudders are and there is no way that they could just hang on the rope hinges alone. The plans call for a hardwood block to be glued and screwed to the skeg onto which the notched forward edge of the rudder can sit thereby taking the weight off the hinges.

To reduce friction and wear UHMW PVC pads are screwed to both the skeg block and rudder notch.

Here’s a photo that probably explains it better than words:

It took me a good few hours to work out the correct size for the hardwood blocks and to get them cut, then to cut the UHMW PVC pads and fix them on. UHMW can’t be glued so I had to drill and countersink two holes in each and then screw them down onto a good bed of marine sealant. It’s basically the same principle I used for the keel strips way back when.

Once that was done I had to position the support blocks and drill through into the skeg. Again I’ve countersunk the holes so that when they are finally epoxied on I can bury the screw heads completely.

Once they were screwed into place I got one of the lads to help me lift the rudders into position and get them held in place with a couple of ratchet straps.

First impressions were good but on closer inspection I spotted that the aft edges of the hulls are less than perfectly straight meaning that the rudders sit tight in some places and are gapped elsewhere. This will mean sone trimming of the forward rudder edges to get a decent custom fit to each hull.

I finished off the day by marking the hinge positions and waterlines, I’ll mark up the places that need trimming tomorrow before dropping the rudders down again and cutting them.

Here’s the port rudder sitting in place: