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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
Injecting two part epoxy (WEST is my favorite) into any cracks, clamping and curing, then doing the threaded rod makes a Sunfish rudder, even after damage, nearly bulletproof!!? Then sand and coat with your choice of finish.? No reason to make a new one, no reason to buy a new one, unless you're not the greatest with tools, but nearly anyone can do these projects.?
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
On Thursday, May 09, 2019 11:34:23 AM Crispin Miller crispinmm@...
[sunfish_sailor] wrote: Photos in the papers afterward showing bigWow, sounds like an overzealous salesman talked to a non-engineer purchasing agent (not the first time that kind of thing has happened). |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
I build my rudder and centerboard for my self made sunfish clone using 3/4" and 1/4" marine ply epoxied together. The tiller is made out of white oak. I bought standard rudder hardware from?intensitysails.com and got a?Racelite Tiller Extension Swivel??from DuckWorks.com
Here is my build pages where I discuss the rudder: |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
开云体育Very cool.And far more reality-minded in scale than the guys who tried to use undersized bolts, similarly epoxy-set but only maybe one foot long, to hold up the massive concrete suspended-ceiling panels in part of Boston’s Ted Williams Tunnel 20 years ago. ?Instead of anything ?Whereupon after a couple of years some of them spalled out of the roof and dropped a panel or two on a lone car passing through at 2 AM and squashed it. ? Husband survived and wife didn’t. ?Photos in the papers afterward showing big turnbuckles suspended from roof bolts half their gauge were pitiful. Regarding the length of time to spin to get it mixed, I don’t know whether it would be 60 seconds or 120, but surely more than 1: ?in a college shop class I helped run, we had a young lady who would take a packet of 5-minute epoxy, squeeze out the two compartments’ contents onto her scrap of cardboard where she’d be mixing it, and take the popsicle stick supplied, and give the pile ONE SWIPE back and forth, as if she were stirring the cream in her coffee, and call it mixed. ?Then came to us complaining about the inferior epoxy. ?Uh, well, your coffee is thinner and keeps on swirling for a while. ?Keeping the epoxy swirling is up to you. ?These students were at MIT, too. ?I decided to write my PhD thesis about such misunderstandings in these highly-educated whippersnappers. ?(Google “So can you build one?”) cm
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
He has to mark it up to make some money over his cost and Sunfish marks it up because "They are Sunfish" John Owens
On Thursday, May 9, 2019, 10:23:53 AM CDT, hughcg@... [sunfish_sailor] wrote:
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Competition cost, fun is affordable Sent from my Verizon Motorola Droid |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
Oh, and I am glad you said it, and think it was entirely appropriate for you
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to say it! On Thursday, May 09, 2019 10:27:07 AM rhkramer@... wrote:
On Thursday, May 09, 2019 09:45:41 AM John Owens jowoodworks@... Wow, that pretty much s$%#s! |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
On Thursday, May 09, 2019 09:45:41 AM John Owens jowoodworks@...
[sunfish_sailor] wrote: I probably shouldn't say this but I do know for a fact you can probablyWow, that pretty much s$%#s! |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
I probably shouldn't say this but I do know for a fact you can probably figure out.? The rudders you buy from Intensity are exactly the same ones you get from Sunfish Direct which are class legal. They ccome out of the same stack of rudders. To be class legal you have to buy them from Sunfish and not an aftermarket dealer.?? John Owens
On Wednesday, May 8, 2019, 7:07:19 PM CDT, Mike King mrmike17@... [sunfish_sailor]
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I made a new rudder for my sunfish from an old mahogany? damaged center board I had laying around.? It came out great.? Got to use some of my old woodworking tools I had not used in years.? Took about a good afternoon and three days? for the three coats of spar urethane to dry. ? Mr Mike. ? Sent from for Windows 10 ? From: sunfish_sailor@... on behalf of Thomas Payne thomas3452@... [sunfish_sailor]
Sent: Monday, May 6, 2019 5:02:35 PM To: sunfish_sailor@... Subject: Re: [sunfish_sailor] Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade? ?
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The cracked/split rudder is common and not too hard to fix. As far as making a new one, why not? As with the Intensity Sails blades (and sails) they are great unless you are planning to race in official, sanctioned Sunfish Class regattas you'll be happy.
The quality is great, just they don't pay the big bucks to the builder like official Sunfish stuff.?
Tom?
On Monday, May 6, 2019, 4:11:15 PM EDT, mark.suszko@... [sunfish_sailor] wrote:
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It's a fun woodworking/shop project to make a new rudder blade, and if it's not for racing, it may only matter to yourself how good a reproduction it is. ?But I tried to do this at one point and could not source the size of good wood I wanted at any lumberyard I tried, and the home centers were worse. I almost decided I'd have to first laminate ?some boards to build up a blank... ?You could go with something made of cheap, glassed, shaped pine or oak and throw it away at the end of the season, just so you get on the water sooner to have fun... to me, that's the primary goal. ?And I almost did that. In the end, I bought a cracked but original rudder for cheap off eBay, and carefully repaired it with internal threaded rods, epoxy and glass, and I trust it. You might have a go at restoring the existing rudder by taking it all apart, sanding it clean,
adding some dovetailed jointed plugs or dowels across the break, and epoxying and glassing it back together. I mean, the stakes are low; you can experiment and build a skill. ? New rudders and daggerboards are pretty expensive, relative to the overall cost
of an older boat. ?If you plan to race it or sell it, you want OEM, race-legal parts. ? For kicking around the borrow pit or local water hole, it may not be as big a deal. Don't let this stop you from hitting the water!
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
On Thursday, May 09, 2019 09:03:27 AM lewis.kent@... [sunfish_sailor]
wrote: That just sounds incredibly fun, where can I sign up for that! WHo gets toI guess you are replying to me (a fairly easy guess, but would be much easier if you quoted some part of what you are replying to ;-) Anyway, to the best of my recollection, nobody takes the bolts out -- during pillarinig, when the roof falls (intentionally) the bolts come along with it -- no bolts in the main sections that intentionally fall, and that tends to break the bolts in the bolted section loose. (Of course, I never went back into those fallen areas to check ;-) As far as signing up -- jobs are scarce these days, and new technologies (like remote control continuous mining machines) take a lot of excitement out of the job ;-) |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
On Thursday, May 09, 2019 08:32:46 AM rhkramer@... wrote:
Works a treat, holds up mountains! ;-) (Well, at least in drift mines --Well, I guess I should / could go a little further -- they do hold up mountains (or the earth's surface) until you do either longwalling or pillaring at which time you intentionally want the mountain (or earth's surface) to collapse ;-) (to relieve the pressure on the remaining pillars). (Aside: Usually the collapse doesn't have much effect at the earth's surface, depending on how deep the mine is.) |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
On Wednesday, May 08, 2019 08:50:26 PM Crispin Miller crispinmm@...
[sunfish_sailor] wrote: Nice technique for a heavy-duty gluing dowel!Just to give a different perspective, you can use a similar technique to hold up the roof in an underground coal mine (and probably other similar mines) -- use a roof bolter machine to drill a 30 to 72" long hole (sometimes longer, iirc)(I forget the diameter maybe 1 1/2"?) and then pack the hole with specially prepared bags of thick epoxy (the bags have separate compartments for the epoxy and the hardener) then use the roof drill hydraulic pressure to push a "roof bolt" (which in this case is essentially a 30 to 72" long rebar (with the typical rebar "pebbled" surface) with a square head on the end. Pushing the rebar into the hole breaks the bags, then use the drilling function to spin the rebar (again, I forget, either for 60 or 120 seconds) then continue to use the hydraulic pressure to hold the square head (and a steel plate (a 6x6" square "washer") against the roof for another 60 to 120 seconds which allows the expoxy to at least partially cure. (I probably should have noted that, after cutting a typical 20x20 foot section of coal and before installing roof bolts, you set temporary roof supports using timbers cut to the proper length, a wooden half header, and wooden wedges.) Works a treat, holds up mountains! ;-) (Well, at least in drift mines -- in deep mines it holds up the earth's surface ;-) |
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
开云体育Nice technique for a heavy-duty gluing dowel! The Gougeon Brothers show a similar epoxy-assisted method for anchoring heavy screws into wood, such as to install a winch on a big boat: ? — drill a way-oversize hole for 2/3 the screw depth, and then for the rest of the depth drill a normal pilot hole for that screw size. ? — Fill the hole about halfway with fiber-filled epoxy, so that when the screw’s added the epoxy will fill the hole the rest of the way. ? — Install the screw and whatever it’s attaching, but only gently, yet. — Let the epoxy set fully and then tighten the screw fully. The point of the way-oversize hole is that the fiberfilled epoxy is stronger than the wood, so it takes the load from the screw threads and distributes it to the surface of a much larger hole, so the screw doesn’t strip the wood. Their whole book’s been posted by their company as a free PDF these days, by the way — google “The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction.” cm
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Re: Best places to sell Sunfish (besides eBay)?
Pretty much every one of the 20+ Sunfish we have sold went through Craigslist. I had good luck with facebook marketplace recently with lawnmowers and generators, minimal spammers for sailboats.
I don't like ebay because I want the buyer to see the boat before they buy it.?? |
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Re: Best places to sell Sunfish (besides eBay)?
One other suggestion: you might see if you can donate the boats. Possible candidates would be a local scout troop for merit badge work, local kid's summer camp, high school shop class (to teach fiberglass repairs). I got my Sunfish from a Habitat For Humanity "Re-Store". Apparently they get small boats donated all the time.
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
Worth Gretter
I second what Mark said about epoxy and threaded rod. This is an awesome repair technique for lots of things, not just rudders. You drill a hole just a little bigger than the rod, and fill it partially with thickened epoxy, then push the rod in. The epoxy of course grips the wood, and it also grips the rod because of the thread. A smooth rod wouldn’t work nearly as well. I have used this for many repairs.
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Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade?
开云体育I made a new rudder for my sunfish from an old mahogany? damaged center board I had laying around.? It came out great.? Got to use some of my old woodworking tools I had not used in years.? Took about a good afternoon and three days? for the three coats of spar urethane to dry. ? Mr Mike. ? Sent from for Windows 10 ? From: sunfish_sailor@... on behalf of Thomas Payne thomas3452@... [sunfish_sailor]
Sent: Monday, May 6, 2019 5:02:35 PM To: sunfish_sailor@... Subject: Re: [sunfish_sailor] Re: Should I DIY a homemade rudder blade? ?
?
The cracked/split rudder is common and not too hard to fix. As far as making a new one, why not? As with the Intensity Sails blades (and sails) they are great unless you are planning to race in official, sanctioned Sunfish Class regattas you'll be happy.
The quality is great, just they don't pay the big bucks to the builder like official Sunfish stuff.?
Tom?
On Monday, May 6, 2019, 4:11:15 PM EDT, mark.suszko@... [sunfish_sailor] wrote:
?
It's a fun woodworking/shop project to make a new rudder blade, and if it's not for racing, it may only matter to yourself how good a reproduction it is. ?But I tried to do this at one point and could not source the size of good wood I wanted at any lumberyard I tried, and the home centers were worse. I almost decided I'd have to first laminate ?some boards to build up a blank... ?You could go with something made of cheap, glassed, shaped pine or oak and throw it away at the end of the season, just so you get on the water sooner to have fun... to me, that's the primary goal. ?And I almost did that. In the end, I bought a cracked but original rudder for cheap off eBay, and carefully repaired it with internal threaded rods, epoxy and glass, and I trust it. You might have a go at restoring the existing rudder by taking it all apart, sanding it clean,
adding some dovetailed jointed plugs or dowels across the break, and epoxying and glassing it back together. I mean, the stakes are low; you can experiment and build a skill. ? New rudders and daggerboards are pretty expensive, relative to the overall cost
of an older boat. ?If you plan to race it or sell it, you want OEM, race-legal parts. ? For kicking around the borrow pit or local water hole, it may not be as big a deal. Don't let this stop you from hitting the water!
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Re: Best places to sell Sunfish (besides eBay)?
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On May 8, 2019, at 4:47 PM, usegraymatter@... [sunfish_sailor] <sunfish_sailor@...> wrote:
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turluck
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