I was thinking that bolting the bridal mounts was a smart thing, then Karp reminded me on how they can come loose so I decided to screw them in and add resin to the equasion aswell...



Used the 4" angle grinder with a thin blade to make the exit-hole for the plate..... it worked !!!!

dummy fitting the new ply decks....
trying my best to get an interesting and eye appealing grain to show off once the decks are clear-coated

Yesterday (Saturday) became resin-day, set in the new bridal plates, re glue the 2 forward most foams that were floating around in the hulls, brush a thin coat of resin over the other foams & add a 40mm wide strip of 50gsm cloth over the ply stringer supports, set the new stringers in place, cut more 40gsm cloth that is then glued to the underside of the decks....
&
fit decks....

Flicked the jug on at midnight, make a coffee, & promptly fall asleep in the chair..... long day



5 days to Lake Bolac Easter Regatta..... pressure is on !!!

Monday night and the staples and strapping comes off .... then it was shaped down to the hull edges

nice wood grain



try as I might I couldn't get them perfectly centred, that's just the way the veneers were .... I did push them across as far as I could to get the best fit...

primer on

more green goes on....

This was taken at 2:00am on Wednesday morning, long night in the shed !!!

yesterday morning..... outside "drying"....
Clear went on 'late last night'...

I couldn't mask the green off and spray the clear on, the green hasn't dried enough to take the masking tape so I had to brush the clear on.
It's not pretty but its sealed and will do for Lake Bolac's easter regatta

@ lake Bolac......

I think these were taken just prior to race 5's start ....

Race 1 at Lake Bolac was ugly, Strong winds saw most not even bothering to make the starting line even after the start most of those that did start soon retired..... only 5 of us finished race 1


A few hundred meters from the finish line I had an opps....a broken ruddercase resulted in an unexpected capsize,I wasn't that far behind Harry at the time but the high winds and busted rudder case saw me limp home with only one rudder in the water whilst the other dangled at an odd horizontal angle out the back.

Back on land some quick repairs were done, this was taken after those repairs but you can still see some of the resulting damage.....
Flaring of the alloy at the hinge bolt
The additional plate that's pop-riveted at the rear of the centre arm and obviously the damage to the top of the timber rudder blade itself
The hinge bolt was belted back straight enough to actually work again

Another shot of the damage.....

you can see a gap between the bottom alloy tube and the centre arm, the force has sprung the alloy well away from the centre arm to a point where the philips-head bolt on that side broke and fell off, Bolac owes me a bolt

underside view....

I also added another plate to assist in holding it together seeing I didn't have another bolt to replace the missing one

missing rivets that were replaced after race 3 are again missing, you can also see the damage to the glass covering on the timber rudder from race 1

This has been an ongoing issue since day one....

Initally I was sheering the bolts that held the bottom pintels in place, so I simply added a backing plate to the inside of the transoms and this did for a while work.....

then it started to happen again, the bolts were often loose after a single race and a simple half a turn sorted it, but eventually I started to sheer bolts again.
Next step was to upsize the bolts and this stopped the pintel issue instantly but that's about the time I saw the rivets being stretched and becoming loose.

In high winds the problem was worse, a single race would mean atleast 2 rivets being lost per rudder case, ultimately at Lake Bolac in the very strong winds we had the 3rd rivet failure which resulted in the previous pics.

time for an upgrade of this

spread the load further down the tubes and increase the distance between the rivets...

this should do it

installation complete

now I just need to go sailing to test it...... damn you WINTER




The question now is obvious, will the stronger bottom plates give me more issues again at the pintles ? I could be chasing my tail here as each improvement seems to add problems in a related area, at worst I'll make some new pintles with a wider foot on the transom, that will probably put the issue back onto the rudder case

Are they ally rivets if so swap them stainless, Alloy will sheer or corrode the heads off the rivets . My opinion use alloy block and shape them and weld it into the arm.

Matt

bit concerned about using stainless rivets, whilst they wont corrode or sheer off under the load they will place that load into the case arms..... that may damage the cases where the rivets are.

I did initially toy with the idea of an alloy plate or an alloy block at that point but I've sen a few damaged cases with that system and that's why I went with the stainless plate.

Hopefully the longer plate will help in spreading the load further along the case's length and if needed I can "upgrade" to the stainless rivets.

The top section will be tig-welded along the joins of the 2 outer curved parts to the centre arm..... when I get a new bottle of argon


Whilst the cases have done well so far I think for peace of mind it will be better welded.

I think Matts right about the alloy rivets, however I would go for Monel rivets. I've always used Monel, easier to work with than Stainless, in terms of, having to replace (easier to drill out)

I've had my boxes and blades since 1993, no problems with loads or the alloy block causing any damage. However, your rudder appears to be getting damaged by the stainless plate when locked down.

I'll give the Monel rivets a try ......

And I'm aware of the 'cut' in the rudders from the s/steel plate, I did originally intend to drill a 1/2inch hole and insert an alloy rod into the hole and the tap a thread in the rod .....
The idea was to then add a small bolt to set the blade against.....

I haven't got to that yet, sailing it sort of took over

It's a modification I'll do over the winter break, along with replacing the main decks, there's a few other changes I'm going to try as well.