E27 Rudder Problem

[SHIP 289]

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I know this has been gone over in older posts, but was wondering if any of the people had finished thier rudder overhaul. I am a adult advisor for a Sea Scout ship and we sail a E27. The rudder has had problems such as rust coming from cracks, and numerous hairline and larger cracks. The rudder has alot of stress cracks and we just pulled her out of the water for the winter here in ohio. We took the rudder off and i have started investigating the cracking. I have stripped a small area were I went thru a couple of areas down thru two white glass layers and to a grayish layer, that seems to be plastic like, lack of a better term. We drilled a couple dozen 1/4" holes and some of the material came out damp to wet. What is the construction of the rudder. My best guess is to strip the layers down to the gray layer make some larger cores into the wet areas, let it dry/ replace the inner core and then west system new glass over the rudder trying to match the original thickness. Does this sound lke a correct proceedure or does some one have a better direction to go to.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer. I will try to post a picture here soon. Does anyone have original drawings for the plans or know where they can be obtained.

Don Kaspar
SS Ship 289
E27 Random
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[Emerald]

It's a foam core rudder, most likely made by Foss. I rebuilt mine a couple seasons ago. Here's a link to the part of my website with step-by-step on what I got into. Let me know if you have any questions. You can do this, but it will take some work.

http://home.comcast.net/~independence31/rudder/rudder-intro.html

 

[SHIP 289]

E27 rudder

David,

I have looked at your site and it is very extensive. I hope ours isnt that bad i will have to get some pics and post them up here. I dont know how much of the white fiberglass coating to remove, or should we drill larger holes to inspect the guts of the rudder. We will have to see how things go, being a Sea Scout ship the youth (14-20) do the work with adult guidance, with-in reason of coarse. They have done some Epoxy work on a couple of dagger boards and rudders, but nothing lie this. We are also looking at finding a local person to help with the project.

Thanks for the interest.

Don

 

[Emerald]

How much of this do you want to do as a learning project versus fixing the boat, and what's the budget? From what I've heard, Foss can rebuild the existing rudder for a reasonable price. If you want to tackle it yourself as a project for the Scouts, I really would look at splitting it and not making any more holes in the side. When I talked with Foss, and he was absolutely great to talk with spending over 45 minutes going over how this is all built, these rudders are laid up as two halves. A precise amount of foam is metered out into the two shells, and then they are clamped together in extremely strong forms that hold them aligned and prevent any flexing. When the foam is done, pull the forms off, trim the foam out of the seam, fill with fiberglass filler, fair, and done. The cracking you're seeing is probably gelcoat due to flex, but not through the actual layup. If you split it, you'll preserve the shell and can fill it with foam again. If you make more exploratory cuts, I bet you find it's saturated, and you have to split it anyway, and then you'll also be faced with first fixing the holes you made - kinda like my attempt to only half dismantel the rudder, ultimately completely taking it apart, and then having to bond the cut side back together first as part of the project To address the gelcoat cracking, you can probably do an epoxy barrier coat. If you do this, remember you need a high density foam around 12-14lbs. Check out US Composites for this and other supplies:

http://shopmaninc.com/

And you must absolutely make a very strong form to hold this together while the foam kicks, all 90 seconds! It's amazing how fast it goes and how much force it generates. I was really lucky to pull it off with the clamps and pieces of T-111 bolted around the rudder. I would absolutely tape the entire seam as well.

It would be a pretty neat project to do with the kids. It would really show just how much you can do with glass if you go for it.

 

[SHIP 289]

E27 Rudder

Dave,

Thanks for the insite. I just copied your project and will have to propose it to the Ship to see how they would like to proceed. It would be nice to do the repair as you did in your article to show them how to do things correctly. That sometimes is not how they think though. Unfortunately the rudder is not in a accessible place right now and I would have to see about being able to have better access, be able to work on it more often. Anyhow I will try and document the repair/rebuild and will of course message you if we need any help.

Thanks again,

Don
E27 Random

 

[Walter Pearson]

One thing to keep in mind is that water intrusion over a long period of time, coupled with freeze-thaw cycles could result in some reduction in strength of the internal metal components. My E27 rudder would drip water at times when sitting on its cradle. Core samples also indicated wet coring. I was given advice to get it checked out since that type of foam doesn't give up its moisture easily. I shipped the rudder to Foss and they found that rewelding was necessary before rebuilding the core and skin.