CS17 #110 rudder work

[Scott Dufour]

Here are a few pics from the rudder construction. I decided to wrap the edges in some thin nylon rope and graphited epoxy to toughen it up a little. It went smoothly,and I was able to avoid any loud power tools right up until the end when I hit it with the ROS. It's so gratifying sometimes to forego electricity.

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[Scott Dufour]

The rope edge:

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[Aaron_G]

Looks great. What is the purpose of the graphite epoxy? I've noticed other posts where people apply it to center boards.

[Scott Dufour]

I've seen two reasons that people add the graphite. One is that if you sand it to a mirror finish it is very, very slippery. That works well on the centerboard where I was trying to minimize friction with the inside of the trunk. The second reason is that it sets up pretty darn scratch resistant. I took a screw driver to a test piece of white pine covered with epoxy-graphite, and while it left a little groove, it didn't scratch. It's this second property that made me use it on the rudder.

I plan on painting the rudder though, and since I have my doubts about paint's ability to stick to the graphite, I'm going to cover the graphite stuff with a coat or two of unmodified epoxy. It's hard enought to get paint to stick to the pure stuff....

[Joe Nelson CS#35]

It works great for your application. It does not offer UV protection. For a centerboard its great...left unpainted (if you can deal with it being black). I dont know if there is any real advantage using it on surfaces that will be painted? It does provide a real nice/hard finish.