Square Meter: Rudder Fairing

After the rudder was trimmed to shape,  we sanded the surface in order to prep for fairing.  The vacuuming really gets the cloth tight to the tangs.  It is showing its ribs like a starving dog.

To smooth things out we will be adding epoxy thickened with colloidal silica and then outer coatings will be with epoxy thickened with West Systems low density fairing compound (#407) to ease sanding.

On other rudder rebuilds, we have used some foam with many layers of glass cloth to get the strength up.  This doubled over heavy carbon cloth feels as stiff as 1/4 inch steel plate, so glass cloth is unneeded. All we have to do is build up a fair surface.

 

Square Meter: Rebuilding the Rudder

The original rudder was fortunately with the boat.  This allowed us to fabricate a copy faithful to the original design.
To do this we had a 1 inch steel shaft cut to length and had 5 tangs welded on.
After we received this we were ready to vacuum bag on carbon cloth.  Once the cloth became rigid, we cut it to shape and over the next few days we will sand and add fairing to make a nice foil shape.
Here are photos to date...

The original wood and steel rudder is visible off to the right.