Rudder assembly
Intensive days at work so when I come back home I am totally drenched. Working on my boat is relaxing but also a bit stressful: the hull is ready so everyone asks when I plan to launch her. At the same time there are many small things which need to be done before launching. Like the rudder!
Everyone attempting building Ilur should take the attitude that Francois Vivier knows what he is doing. If he gives rudder hardware specifications then it is wise to use this hardware.
I’m one of those who knows better and decided to use something else. Not that I don’t trust the designer but I just had it on shelf and stubbornly wanted to use it.
That caused me a bit more unnecessary work.
First I glued rudder head, with the rudder body inside head-cheeks so that I can be sure I have enough clearance for final assembly.
My non-standard hardware has wide cheeks and I wanted to thru-bolt them to the rudder (for strength) so rudder core was reinforced with a bit of plywood.
Another issue was clearance: the rudder turned out to be 1,5mm narrower than my hardware. I milled oak lists to fill this gap.
Trimmed to shape and ready for gluing.
On the inside of rudder cheeks I routed cavities for shallow, bronze nuts: the bottom cheeks are housing rudder blade which needs to rotate freely. Thru-bolting is possible only closest to the transom.
Rudder hardware needs also to have clearance for bottom reinforcements. I made mine from oak, they are glued and screwed from the inside.
Lastly - axis for rudder blade. It became quite tight with spacing between components but turned out really well.
All screws and bolts are doped in Ettan, to keep water out. I want to be able to disassemble the rudder for maintenance so I did not use Sika or epoxy.
Lastly the tiller was mounted and rudder head screwed in place with thru-bolts.
Today the stormy weather finally went away so I could roll out the boat and mount the rudder.
Rudder in retracted position. The blade moves with satisfying resistance, I can adjust it by loosening or tightening 4 nuts on the rudder axis.
I’m happy with the final result.
Next step is building spars!