Saturday, April 18, 2009

Now I can pretend to steer my boat...






Rudder assembly is now finished and ready for fiberglassing. The rudder has my first ever wood flour/epoxy fillets and they turned out fine except for the necessary sanding. With practice I hope my technique improves  and fillets will need less sanding in the future. The rudder cheeks are made from the same 3/4 inch ribbon striped tiama as the transom and I am going to try and leave them bright finished as in the photo since it is such nice looking wood. 


I have been fiberglassing the centerboard and rudder and have a question for anyone out there. Is it necessary to try and wrap the fiberglass around the edges or is okay to trim the fiberglass to the edge and then just epoxy the edges themselves? In the manual it appears as if the fiberglass is simply trimmed to the edge but I want to be doubly sure. 


The keelson is attached to the keel and ready to be put in the cradle. I am not going to do that quite yet as I need room in the garage to scarf and cut out the hull panels. My tentative schedule is to accomplish the hull panel job this week and then be ready for the exciting part of actually starting to stitch the boat together. 


Empresa
I would still appreciate more comments on the proposed boat name. See the March 28 post for more details. The captain is sold on the name but my first mate of almost 34 years is not quite convinced yet.

4 comments:

DocMgt said...

The ribbon striped tiama you are using makes for a stunning rudder.

I don't remember if you said what color you were planning on paintint the hull, but I look forward to seeing the transom on your completed PocketShip.

Anonymous said...

Dave:
I did not wrap the class around the edge of my centre board. If you were to wrap around the edge you would need to radius the edge to prevent seperation of the glass at the edge.
Regards,
Hendrik

Dave C. said...

We are leaning towards a Ocean/medium blue for the hull from the waterline up. I don't want to go too dark as evidently dark paints deteriorate faster because of much greater heat absorption from the sun. Topsides will be white but I am doing the entire companionway in meranti mahogany ( it was almost as cheap as plain old clear fir that would be painted) to match the rub rails.

Dave

Dave C. said...

Hendrik:
Thanks for confirming about not glassing the edges, makes things much simpler.

Dave