Lately I’ve wanted to complete an item since the boat is coming along all at the same pace so I decided to build the rudder. It’s laminated from a 1/4″ piece sandwiched between two 3/8″ pieces. Here I’m gluing on some oak edge protectors.

The edge protectors are tongue and groove and the hole is for lead ballast. I cut three little notches into the 1/4″ piece so the lead will flow in there and lock itself in place.

Next I made a router guide out of some MDF to cut the foil shape. It is tight enough to stay put on the rudder blank and I left the flat spots to I have something to index off of on the other side. The guide worked really well, better than I thought it would.

Towards the tip though it does need to be clamped on. A 36 grit Roloc disk in a die grinder makes short work of the flat spots and a DA sander cleans it up. It’s pretty easy to use the plys like a topo map to keep the shape right.

The holes are for stopper knots on the up and downhaul lines. The 1/4″ layer has a slightly smaller diameter so the two outside layers make flanges that guide the line around the pivot. I ran a drill bit on it’s side through there to clean up the epoxy and grind the wood into a nice smooth shape for the line to sit in.

Next I melted some lead shot to pour into the tip. Just a thin piece of ply clamped to the underside kept the lead from leaking out.

After a bit of power planing I brought the lead down to the level of the wood and after some minor fairing it’ll be ready for fiberglass!

First I wet out the board with epoxy, then I put a ~3″ strip of 6oz fiberglass cut on the bias around the bottom of the tip. I pre-shaped it dry a bit and it conformed surprisingly well. Then I draped on some cloth and wet it out.