Sawdust & Glory...

So, yesterday I jumped into the shallow end of the woodworking gene pool.  The Mutineer desperately needs a new rudder.  As you can see from the pic below, it's seriously delaminated.  Also, one of the many previous owners used a regular steel bolt to keep it from kicking up instead of either a stainless one or rigging the uphaul/downhaul properly.

Can you say delamination?

I began by laying out the rudder, aligning the straight leading edge of the rudder against the factory edge of the plywood.  I "lucked out" in the fact that the plywood is about 1/8" thinner than the rudder.  Once I put the fiberglass and epoxy on both sides, it should be just about perfect.

I've even got enough plywood left over for another rudder!

Here it is all laid out.  Since I didn't remove the tiller/cheek plate assembly, I scribed a perfect half circle with the tape measure after finding the center point.

About to pass the point of no return...

 The orbital jig saw didn't come with blades, so I bought some fine toothed ones, but they had a different mounting style, so I had to resort to cutting curves with my circular saw.  I set the depth to just thicker than the plywood and ran the saw back and forth to plow out enough swing room to cut the curve.  Not the most ideal situation, especially since I've got an oversized circular saw for cutting deck posts from back in the day when I had a construction company.  Ready for the belt sander!

Maybe I'll make a longboard while I'm at it...

 So here's where I got to when the only belt I have for my belt sander broke.  It's really difficult to figure out everything you need on Friday night after work for the whole weekend on an island with only a grocery store that's really just a glorified vending machine.

Note the layers of plywood allow me to see the contours of the foil shape I'm going for.  Also, the thickest part of the rudder is supposed to be a third of the way along the chord from the leading edge, which is why the rudder is asymmetrical.  I've still got a lot of sanding to do, but when I'd gotten to this point on both sides, the leading and trailing edges were close the original rudder.  That means I'm almost there and will be ready for fiberglassing soon!

Would look cool just varnished...

I swept up all the sawdust right before my neighbor, with whom I share the driveway with, got home...;)

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P.S.  Since I was already covered in sawdust (I love that!), I decided to tackle another project that I've been wanting to do for months, a Kentucky Stick Chair.  I found some plans online and bought some treated 2x2's the other night before heading home.  Along with some all thread rod and some acorn nuts and washers, I'm good to go.  Normally, I would setup stops and do this mass-production style, but I'm only making one chair, just to see if I like it.  The fact that it's made of wood and folds up like a kinetic sculpture is really cool.

Stock photo from plans

  

My fine cabinetry habits kicked in and instead of measuring each stick, I measured on and used it as a template for each successive stick.  The holes for the threaded rod were also done template style to make sure it all lines up perfectly.

Some assembly required...

Here, all the pieces are ready for assembly.  The threaded rod gets progressively harder to feed through the holes as you add more sticks.  I also discovered that you should install the two center rods first, since it has the most overlap, hence the most friction.  After at least three attempts, both on the driveway and the back of the pickup to save my back, I gave up.  Figuring out which holes line up with which for 25 sticks is not something that should be attempted after a six pack.  I gave up and headed for the showers, knowing when I'm defeated.  I may have lost the battle, but tomorrow, I'll win the war (even if it kills me).

Looks easy...

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P.P.S.  What I've neglected to share is that all of this activity is actually just preparation for the real project at hand, a nesting/take apart Eastport Pram from Chesapeake Light Craft!  The Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival is held every year for my birthday.  After years of drooling on floating pieces of art, I'm going to bite the bullet and buy some plans at the show.  I'm pretty jazzed about it.  I've already got some epoxy and hardener.  I'm planning on laying out the drawings on thin plywood, then cutting out templates to make two boats total.  At worst, I'll keep the second set of panels unassembled.  My dream is to someday host an event where kids build a dinghy with a parent or guardian over the course of a few months and then we have a big BBQ and sailboat race in the park where everyone gets to splash their boat.  Summer is a very precious commodity in the PNW!

Have you ever seen anything sexier than that?

Not to get too ahead of myself, but the way you make this a nesting dinghy is that at some point you cut your beautiful new boat in half!  There are two bulkheads that are above the waterline of the loaded boat, so theoretically, both halves float!  They even sell the compass rose inlay!  I'll definitely be looking for some boat show specials...;)

These are normally built out of very expensive marine grade plywood, but there's really nothing terribly different about it than normal, void free plywood once you've encapsulated it in epoxy and varnish.  1/4" oak plywood is very reasonably priced at the big box store and I can use dimensioned red oak lumber from there too to make the gunwales out of instead of expensive mahogany.  I'll save my quarter sawn white oak stash for making furniture.

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So, today it's time to tackle that blasted chair assembly again.  Wish me luck.  I think I'll try to assemble it in the folded position so that each piece's orientation is more obvious.