carbon Tiller

That is one piece that İ really enjoyed building. İt was rather quick to do and the materials were pleasant to work with.

İ am not sure why but İ had this obsessive idea of building my tiller with two ply skins and a foam core. For whatever reason İ did not feel like building it just out of foam.

So the first thing İ did was use a straight stick place it on the boat as if it was the tiller. Got all my measurements from there - length, height, where to start and finish curves etc...

From there , İ used flat scrap piece of ply, reported all the measurements previously taken and used a long flexible batten to draw the curves.

Little screws were used to secure and force the batten into shape.



Once the basic tiller shape was drawn on the ply sheet, İ cutted it out and dry fitted it on the boat to make sure the basic dimensions looked ok.

After minor adjustments to the shape, İ used this template to cut out the two definitive sides İ used for my pink foam sandwich.

Here they are temporarly fixed. A tiller is soon to be born !

The rest was basically a pink mess. I use the plywood skins to cut a slightly larger piece of pink foam and routed a channel on the foam into which the ply would fit on both sides, then hand sanded the whole thing to the point İ was satisfied ....and looked like a pink panther to whoever would walk in me in my garage.

This is what it looked liked just before lamination........................

.......................and the after lamination with carbon tape and sleeve

İ will let it cure, then sand it and finish it with a clear coat. Since this is my first carbon part, İ am not sure what it will look like but İ hope İ will manage to come close to Chad's part.

İf İ dont, well then İ will just paint the whole thing plain white !

Rudder Sheating

Since my rudder is shaped in Red Cedar, I decided to strengthen it by adding strips of carbon.


I believe Chad sent me a great article on foil shaping and sheating. İf you Google "Guide to wooden Foil construction" you will directly find the pdf article by SP. İt is a great article that clearly shows the different ways of strengthening a Cedar shaped foil.




First, I used my router and digged a 3mm recess channel about 10cm wide. I placed this channel right at the max thickness point (30% of chord for a Naca 00012). Since my rudder was already shaped and therefore the surface of both sides was more rounded than flat, it gave me some work to dig that channel properly. Lots of prior trials on a scrap piece of wood before I actually worked on my nicely shaped rudder.


Then I successively layed three layers of 300grs Unidirectional carbon fabric. İt is one thick, smooth carbon fibre cloth ! Great to work with.
Each layer was carefully laminated with resin using a squeegee. All excess resin was removed. So although the fabric is thick, the 3 layers ended up between pretty thin.

Then I flipped the board and did exactly the same on the other side



The recess still came a little deeper than the actual carbon layup so I used fairing compound to bring the foil back to shape using the template I have.


The trick İ used for fairing is very simple. The template İ am using was cut from a scrap piece of ply. İt has the exact shape of one half side of the foil.


First İ placed the template on the foil and "ran" it from one end to the other carefully looking at the amount of empty space İ had between foil and template. This gave me a good idea of where the fairing needed to be done and therefore where to lay down the fairing putty.

I wetted the foil with fresh resin and apply the putty with a spatula roughly where I believed ıt was necessary.
Then again İ placed my template at one end of the foil and carefully dragged all the way to the other end. By doing so, it removed all excess fairing that İ had laid down.



Cleaned up the template, re applied fairing where needed and dragged the template once more.

After about 4 passes, İ had no more voids to fill and no more excess fairing to remove. Simple and effective !


İt was now time to sanding with the longboard but that is such a boring story that İ will just post a picture of the final result.




Laminating was another fun accomplishment. İ decided to laminate the foil with 200 grs carbon cloth. İt is expensive stuff here in Turkey but İ wanted to give it a try. Hopefully one day İ will be able to make carbon parts as nice as some of Chad's....! My objective was to finish it up with a clear coat to give it a high tech racy carbon look.....

The lamination itself was easy and I used the same rack İ had build for the keel.

One single layer of carbon cloth, brush, foam roll and squeegee and that was it. İ took my time to work that resin inside the fiber cloth. İ applied the resin with a brush, rolled it all over with a cheap white foam roll and then squeeged all the excess out. İ came to really like those foam roll for resin application. They work beautifully by wetting the cloth properly without any excess.


İ then clipped the trailing edge with plastic wrapped squared long sticks . That gave me a very clean trailing edge.



After a little trimming and cleaning İ epoxied some 45 degree carbon cloth to the rudder head. That is to give it more strength against twisting forces which will most likely occur with the tiller forcing the rudder head one way and the water pushing the rudder tip the other way.

For that purpose İ just cut 2 large strips and applied them in a X pattern over the head. Did the same on both sides.



Than following the advices of Chad, İ cut a recess on the leading edge to fit the pins but still allow the rudder to be tucked in the transom when in place. That is supposed to be good, so İ just follow what the more experienced guys have to say...! The recess İ cut out was just about 15% of total chord or about 4cm in my case .


On that picture you can clearly see the diagonal reinforcements which were limited to the rudder's head because İ did not want to mess up with the underwater part which is pretty nice as is.





Then İ again used carbon cloth to laminate the recess. Two layers of carbon tape İ bought and a top layer of regular carbon cloth cut at 45 degrees. Dont ask me why İ did it this way.....no reason whatsoever. But the result looks good.

Truth is that for the first time in this building process İ used peel ply (but no absorbing cloth, though !) The final result when everything is dried and you remove the peel ply is awesome ! Barely any need to sand and a cool little texture to it... Loved the stuff and will use it more .

So the rudder basic construction is pretty much done. İ will reinforce the head where the tiller will grab, install the pins with continous hoops of unidirectional, and clear coat.

Will post pictures of final results.

Cabin hatch door

Seems like one of those really easy things to build but when time came to do it, I just did not know where to start !
Took me some thinking to get it right.....and of course many questions to other builders as how they approached the issue.

One thing I knew : I was going to use alu channels to slide in the vertical panel as well as the cabin top hatch. The point was trying to make the whole thing as water tight as possible... And because of that decision I started thinking about a zillion different ways to do it.

I started glueing thin strips of wood on the cabin interior all around the hatch opening. Those strips only purpose was to give me enough surface to glue the alu channel on. Indeed, the U shaped alu channel is just about 6mm internally (thickness of my ply) but about 8mm externally. So İ needed to make that ply a little thicker. Those strips added about the 2mm needed. They will also serve as the base to glue on the additional ply I will use to cover and hide the alu channel.








Once the strips were glued, I epoxied the alu channel all around. Easy for the vertical bit and a little trickier for the horizontal part. To position the rails at their exact position I slid the top door in for perfect alignment and used blue tape to secure everything in place.

If it fitted perfectly in before gluing, I reckoned it should fit just as perfect after the alu channel were epoxied in place.





Third step was to glue additional ply strips behind all alu channels.
For the horizontal door, those ply strips will help support the alu channels if someone decides to step on the hatch when it is closed..... :( I believe they will also help with the water tightness issue.



For the vertical door, they make for a nice groove to hide the alu channel and helps out preventing water coming in.

Fourth step was find a way to hide those alu channels while the horizontal hatch is open and removed. To do that , İ used thinner strips of wood that İ simply glued on top of the alu channel.One can see on the below picture the small notch İ had to leave on the sides to allow the vertical panel to slide in. These openings would be later covered up by the upper hatch.




İt was fun to "mold" the V shaped batten to fit the front shape of the cabin. İ left it in a bucket of water overnight, clamped it to the cabin hatch the next day and let it dry. When İ removed the clamps, it was perfectly molded to the cabin shape. All İ had to do was epoxi it the followıng day.

At that point İ had my basic hatch done. İt looked good. But trying to make that upper hatch water proof was another challenge....!

What İ did was to glue other strips of ply ON TOP of the cabin hatch. Those strips follow the natural slope of the upper hatch and should therefore divert any water away from the U channels.

Easier to understand with pictures than with words. Took a lot of trial and error, as well as back and forth to the wood shop, to finally find what İ needed and get it right.

So to close my cabin entrance İ first slide in the vertical panel ........... (through the side notch)

......and then slide in the horizontal panel

And this is what it looked when it is all closed up:




Minor adjustments and finishing touches are still necessary and İ already know İ will have to rework the waterproof issue cause water will get in no matter what, but İ am basically done with it.

İ will let you guys know how it all work out as soon as my boat hits the water.

bulb to keel

İ am really gratefull to all the first builders who documented their builds with great blogs. Those guys are heros because they all did it with no previous references...so many details to think about and those guys did it all for us.

So my special thanks on this post goes to Jeff - Alchemy and Kevin - Pipedream who greatly detailed how to drill lead. What I did was follow their advices...nothing else.

First I used my drill driver to slowly drill the pilot holes with a 6mm metal bit. Went slowly, used oil which made it really easy for the lead to get loose from the bit grooves, and set the clutch to about 14 out of 20. That set up saved me from broken too many bits....Actually the first first bit popped after maybe 1 mn. I was too much in a hurry to drill though that apparent soft material. So I took my time, changed the clutch setting and did not break any other drill bit.

After the pilot hole was drilled all the way through, I drilled the counter sink. For that I used a 22 mm wood spade bit. It worked fine and I removed nice shavings as you can see in the picture.

However I had to switch back to my regular portable drill because my drill driver simply did not have enough power. It does take some stamina to remove large shavings of lead !

After all 8 pilot holes were drilled all the way through the lead bulb halves, I cleaned up the recess space I had left when pouring the lead and adjusted the keel inside .

I took my time to take measurements and be absolutely sure all holes were ok and the keel was fitting nicely in the bulb recess. Long 6mm wood drill bit and holes were very quickly drilled through the hard wood. No turning back !

Than I switched to a larger 10mm bit and re-drilled all holes.

Bingo, I was done.

All I had to do was to remove the very heavy halves, and put them aside on their brand new little cart. It is SOooo easy to move them around my garage now ! No more back pain...

I will now buy the stainless steel bolts, assemble, fair and set aside the whole bulb to keel assembly.

Rudder Part 1 : Shaping

Learning is part of this building experience. And it comes from doing things over and over. So when time came to shape my rudder, I knew I was not going to make the mistakes I made while building my keel .



First was the choice of wood. I found a nice red cedar in Turkey which looked nice, smelled great and is a treat to work with. What a difference a softwood does for shaping ! I must have been nuts to do my rudder in oak !!!!!


Second was the time spent to prep the plank. I did everything by the book , like cutting strips, flipping them, epoxing them back together but instead of cutting them at home with my circular saw, I asked the guys where I bought the wood to do it for me. 5mns later I had perfectly sized, identical rips of red cedar. Nice




Then the tools. This time I bought myself a hand planner. For whatever reason, I can't work with my eletrical one. It simply does not do the job. So I took my time to sharpen the blade on a oily stone, and smoothed out both sides of the plank. The planner was smoothly running on the wood, and it made a pleasant noise to let me know everything was good. Wood working rules !


When that was finished, I used a router to drill a 5mm deep channel on the leading and trailing edges of the blank. That channel was filled with resin and silica. It will be used as a reference of where both halves should meet and will give the extra strength needed on those extremities.
Having a center reference around the blank is quite important. İ know it because when shaping my keel I lost the pencil drawn line on the blank which made it really hard to finish off leading and trailing edge symetrically.





İ carefully cutted the rudder template which was printed on an A3 sheet, glued it to a piece of ply, and carefully cutted the wood following the dotted line as close as possible. Sanding block and paper were used to smooth the contours.

İ did this twice and then glued the ply templates on each side of the blank, making sure they were perfectly aligned with the center line on the blank. İ confirmed their exact location by taking a few measurements on each side. They matched, so İ knew the templates were well positionned.

So to make a long story short, I had a perfect plank before I really got serious with shaping my rudder. And all that prep was well worth it ! İf you are shaping for the first time, please take my advice for what it is worth and spend as much time as necessary to start off with a nice, smooth symetrical blank.

Then the fun started...

-İ drew longitudinal lines every 4 cms on the blank top and bottom sides

-Using my router with a guide, İ follow the lines and digged channels all across the length of the blank. To do them properly, İ would first align my router on top of the line, lock the guide in place, then lower the router bit until it would almost touch the ply template glued on the side.



On the first few channels İ routed, İ was not too agresive because İ wanted to avoid routing too deep. But during the process İ gained confidence and ended up routing channels with almost no space left with the template. They came out nice. As a matter of fact, so nice that İ routed those channels every 2cms ! That left me little wood to remove with the hand planner.


-once İ had all those channels routed, İ used my leftover blue spray paint and lightly sprayed the whole blank to give me a visual reference of the level İ had to plane down to.





-Hand planner in action, blade sharpened and set at about 2mm. İ very quiclky remove the wood left on the upper channels. The picture below was probably after 20 mns of work.



Another 20 mns and İ got to that point seen in the below picture. İ was gaining confidence in my plaaning abilities.....and therefore kept going.







İ reduce the depth of the blade to less than 1mm and maybe another 20mns later came very close to a pretty smooth surface without even using my sanding board. All the blue paint was almost gone and the wood just feeled pretty smooth to the hand.




I finished it off with my recently built longboard and my large rectangle orbital sander. Basically all I had to do was to carefully send the last mm or so until all paint was gone. I took my time to do it properly and all the paint pretty much disappeared all at once. I was finished.
That is what it looks like.

A closer look :

The resin+silica putty I put inside the grooved channel, makes for a nice and solid traling edge

Same for the leadind edge. It was easy to fold since the visual reference was very clear.

Overall I must say I am very happy with the result. I can definitly say I learned my lesson and do not fear any longer building a keel or a rudder. Great experience.