Rudder Part I

The rudder work has been spread out as I have to multitask a lot to keep things moving in other areas of the build. First I glued up the rudder blank and made the casting patterns and put it aside as I waited for the castings to be done. The rudder is made from Sapelli, silicon bronze and Black Locust cheek plates and tiller.

Laying out the boards and the template

Drilling the drift holes on the drill press. Could not drill quite through the planks so...

Finished off the holes by hand. Then I would clamp this board to the next one and using the first board as a drilling guide drill into the second board enough to mark it. Then take that to the drill press and start again.

Gluing surfaces prepared with a scratch stock 

Gluing and driving drifts.

Rudder glued up with G2 epoxy. The saw horses are leveled and two clamping cauls made sure the rudder was glued up flat.

Sunny day for the hard work of shaping. First power plan, then hand tools.

Shaping the aperture. A lot of water passes over the aperture so needs some attention.

Mostly shaped. Some final faring and edges left.

Castings ground and now back from the machinist who bored the gungeon holes and made bushings. He also used an offset boring bar on the milling machine to true up the pintles. Because I cast the pintles horizontally there is no draft angles to fuss about when fitting them to the rudder.

Fitting the pintles. The straps are let in half depth. I won't bolt them yet...they all have to line up.

Rudder shaped and pintles fit. Next hanging the rudder and tiller and cheek plates.