Week 13 before launch - Production of rudderblade/centerboard & Painting the coppershield

 07.09.-13.09.15

 Production of rudderblade/centerboard & Painting the coppershield

 

Ant starts crafting the rudderblade

While Ant started crafting the rudderblade and the centerboard I prepared the hull to get ready for painting.

We made the rudderblade and the centerboard out of 4 layers Okoume plywood (2x12mm, 2x4mm) to get the right thickness for the gudgeons later on.

... and also the centerboardblade with 24 pd of lead inside

Inside the centerboardblade, which will be 1400 mm long and 500 mm wide we added 24 pd lead sheets which Ant glued in with epoxy to fill all the gaps between.

The weight is important to let the centerboard go down, when it should be lowered. Apart of that it increases the stability of the boat.











The next two pics show the rudder. At the right side you see 4 pieces of plywood glued together. On the left side you see the template for the cheeks - as you can see them they are made of Sapeli. The cheeks will hold the tiller.

The cheeks for the rudderblade

4 pieces of plywood already glued together

The plugholes on the forestem closed with grain plugs

  

In the meanwhile I went on with the fairing of the hull, a lot of really boring sanding and a lot more ahead.


I cut and planed down the too long plugs  and sanded them even to the stemsurface









The time of late evening-work started, as the best conditions for painting in a very frequented workshop are the nighthours, specially if you can't put up a tent - and at the place where I worked it wasn't possible to put one up.

We started the painting process by marking out the waterlines using a laserlevel. Above (at least it's above as long the boat isn't turned) the waterline we will put coppershield-coat on to protect the boat best against algae-growth. We'll need to put at least 3 layers on.

Marking the waterline

Ready for getting her new clothes

Already painted with 3 layers of coppershield

After marking the waterline the boat was wraped into polurethane to keep the rest of the hull clean.



We started Thursday at around 09:00 cleaning the surrounding, hoovering and tacking the boat and finished at 00:30 with the first layer. Until putting on the next layer we had to wait at least 4 hours, so that was put on at 06:00 in the morning and the final one friday evening.






Friday night all 3 layers of Coppershield were on and we were tired.