I tore up the trailing edge on one of my daggers recently. I've got enough experience w/ glass & epoxy (and a little carbon) that I don't think that the repair itself will be too troublesome.

I plan to grind out the damage, which is about 2" high and 3/4" deep in the trailing edge, about a foot from the bottom, and vacuum some carbon in it, then fair.

My question: Do I need to cover it in gel coat? Considering that it is in a spot that rarely sees the sun, I'm wondering if I need to do anything at all to the fairing compound after fairing it? I hate working with polyester resin.

Should I put a single thin covering of non-thinned epoxy over it?
or just treat the whole daggerboard w/ a poliglow-style UV inhibitor?
or re-gelcoat?

Any advice is welcome. Thanks

Rob

Anything you put over it for a finish is just cosmetic...if you don't care, leave it raw. Polyester resins are UV stable and, although it yellows, epoxy is structural stable with UV exposure. Heck, on small repairs, I hit it with a little krylon. Vacuum bagging is probably overkill on that too (did I just say that?).

To repair those dings, I mix up some finely minced glass fibers (either bought that way or self made) and fill the void with that putty. I tape a hotel key cards to both sides of the board to form the flat sides to leave very little fairing.

I have TONS of hotel cards/empty gift cards/vanilla reload cards (twice the size, good for squeegees), but I don't think I've used them the way you're talking..I've seen your pics. I have used them to help make a very square edge at the dagger trunk exit. Anyway, I'll try it like you say.

I have milled fibers from us composites, but I was planning to use carbon just to try to prevent this from happening again. Does that just make the rear of the dagger trunk more likely to get torn up? Is carbon even stronger in that situation or is it too brittle?

I hit a log floating under the surface, but the front of the dagger shows no damage at all. The rear got damaged from getting jammed into the trunk.

I've done repairs in all sorts of materials on the trailing edge of boards...it's all going to crush if it gets impacted with enough force and I'm not sure that it makes much difference what material you use. There is just so little material on the thin edge. I consider this type of repair as maintenance.

You should have had a Nacra infusion when they had "gybing" daggerboards. You would have to repair them after every regatta.

This is the standard 'Inter' rudder. Without looking I'm going to guess that the damage goes in far enough to be about 3/8" thick at its widest.

New semi-related questions:
Can fairing compound be polished smooth? I've never hit it with anything finer than 220 or so (usually just 80). It seems really porous to be on top.

How 'sharp' should the trailing edge be?

Thanks!

I hit a floating 2x4 (was looking/talking to another boat) doing around 8 knots.
it hit both hulls, both centerboards, both rudders. did similar damage in several places.
It was like a car wreck over, and over and over ...


What the heck is a "vanilla reload card"?

Jake what about on rudder bottoms? glass strands? kevlar? carbon cloth? sheet metal?

Goal being to reduce the loss WHEN you hit bottom (sand or mud around here)

Carbon is standard on the bottoms of the Gen3 rudder blades. Kevlar is the toughest in this type of application (I use it when building a composite part intended to skid along grass/concrete etc.). Trouble is it's the worst to work with and paint doesn't bond well to it. By worst to work with, I mean you need to modify scissors to cut it, and once it's in a layup its an absolute dick to finish cut or finish sand. Will require a hand sander and lots and lots of 60 grit sand paper to get to final shape. But it'll hold up better to repeated groundings, if it doesn't de-bond from the base layers.

http://www.fibreglast.com/product/Kevlar_Pulp_544/Fillers

It's about 3x the size of a CC, but still plastic, although a little more flexible than a typical CC/hotel room key.

Fibers only prevent a break and high modulus items are pretty useless at the tip of foils unless you really plan on hitting things hard. They won't prevent chips/scrapes/gouges. You need a hard shell to resist that kind of abuse and properly cured gelcoat is hard to beat in this regard.

Yeah, when I hit the thing, since it was completely submerged, I thought I snapped a shroud at first. Then 2 secs later it hit my rudder, and I drew the only obvious conclusion -- my boat and I were being eaten by a lake bound sea monster.

After nothing else happened, and sitting at a dead stop (from trapped out racing to the windward mark.) I moved on and came in last. When I came back to shore and the dagger was stuck I realized what happened. I had to rig a sort of up-@%#$er on the trap line to get enough purchase on the board to free it. The rudder had no damage at all...but I guess that makes sense since the front edge of the dagger didn't either.

You can push the board up from under the boat while someone pulls. Real pain but that's what we've done.

Jake, I think Kevlar pulp has considerable benefit in this application: "The results show that the incorporation of Kevlar pulp into epoxy contributed to improve the friction and wear behavior considerably. The maximum wear reduction was obtained when the content of Kevlar pulp is 40 vol%." From an abstract by J. Wu, seeing if I can get the entire paper now.

I would not paint over the kevlar, so the surface roughness may be higher but done right you can get a pretty smooth finish and no loss in performance.

Screw kevlar, from experience. he's not talking wear, he's talking fine edge impact. It won't help and it's certainly not worth the fuzzy headache it becomes unless you're getting paid by the government.

Not on the TE, on the bottom of the rudder blades and dagger boards. Kevlar is still half the price of carbon in lighter weights, at the sacrifice of 1/3rd the stiffness.

I fought a kevlar boat for 2 years and there is no way you can convince me of it's merits on a daggerboard repair, no matter where on the board. Not worth the headache. done right you have to put glass over it as a sanding barrier.If you're trying to offer the most laborious and frustrating method, then I commend you.

I'm sorry. We borrowed a kevlar A-cat last week, huge chunks of paint flaking off. Glad I don't own it.

I warned that Kevlar was extremely labor intensive. I hate using it outside of molds, and I did not use the filler I pointed at to fix the chunks in my rudder tips, elected to go with graphite. MN was asking for options on wear strips. Kevlar is amongst the most abrasion resistant materials the government has made commercially available. Translation, it is also extremely hard to fair.

About the only beachcat use I can see for it is the bottom of a cat that get's dragged up and down the beach, in which case the surface really doesn't matter.
p.s. A cat you borrowed a Waterrat?

I'll add another option for a tough surface, I tend to forget about as it's heavier than glass/carbon/kevlar, West Systems 420 Aluminum Powder. "Abrasion Resistance – Apply undercoats of epoxy modified for abrasion resistance or temporary UV resistance." Much easier to sand than kevlar.

We use it as the top surface on a fiberglass mold, as it forms a very hard coating, less chances of dinging the tooling when removing parts.

Kirk's H16 had kevlar strips on the bottom for that reason. We used Aluminum powder on the bottom of my H14 back when I was a toddler, it held up extremely well to the shells that pass for sand around here.

Yep, sailed the club A-cat, a Waterrat, too light to really get an opinion but J liked it for a solo play toy.

+1 for use of kevlar on the bottom.

I use this also already for years because of the high abrassion on my sharp assymmetric hulls. And by the way, it is not much harder to work with then other type of cloth.

On the bottom I use kevlar in ribbon format which covers exactly the sharp end of the bottom. To finish off the wet kevlar-laminate I always use PVC/tape (which I take off after hardening). The sand on the beach will sand it off very smoothly (only shells can make a hairy surface).

With regard to your damaged trailing-edge of the rudderblade, I wouln't suffice with some filler or so.
Sand it off with a overlapping "welding" section of about 4 cm on the sound part of the rudder. reconstruct any core if necessary and start laminating.
Do this for both sides of the rudder. Finally sandoff a nice sharp new trailing edge!