Ocean, Sky, Rudders

Chicago Electric power tool: Made in China

After building up the corners of the rudder boxes with a good thick mixture of micro balloons, cabosil ad epoxy, I was able to use a thick commercial roofing membrane as a mold to keep the mixture in place. 

With the remainder of the same batch, I filled the edges of the upper rudder bearing access hatches.

To dig out the edges of the laminated pieces, I discovered a tool that has actually become very useful.

It's a power band file ( basically a small hand held belt sander that is highly adjustable and makes it possible to sand and remove material from very secluded areas.  This tool is available from Harbor freight Tools for a guilt producing price of $29.00  seen here : 

 http://www.harborfreight.com/1-2-half-inch-bandfile-belt-sander-92158.html

Political comment:

I find it very clever that a Chinese manufacturer would name the brand of a tool for a large city in the United States........It would leave you to believe that you are supporting the US economy by buying "local".  It's also very amazing how small they can print the words "MADE IN CHINA" on a sticker. 

The sun is my friend

Solar powered post cure oven:

(one good use of a green house in the summer time) 

120 degrees and climbing....just closed the door and it's 12:00 noon.

Simplicity.......well, sometimes not

kick up rudder box / boarding step

prep work required to laminate 5 layers of bi-directional glass over the stainless pivot tubes

a close up of the very odd way that I had to wrap the pivot tubes. Sometimes the order in which you build things is very important. As you can see, I boxed myself into a corner and had to hog out a slot so that I can slide saturated glass in place sideways .  The yellow goo is vacuum seal tape placed so that resin will not get into the pivot tube.  The tube sections were bonded in place first with a rod that insured alignment.

With all due respect for the confidentiality of the design, I have included an illustration of the rudder box as shown in the plan set.  I have removed all technical notes but include these illustrations so that one can get a better idea of the end result.

the beauty of simplicity

Multihulls need not be expensive......