Rudder Lamination - The Real Deal

Yesterday's post and pics were all a dry test run for tonight's real deal.

Before Scott and Sandy came over to help I got things set up. I wrapped three bar clamps with plastic wrap (to ward off unintended epoxy spills and drips). I clamped the five inside staves together so we could apply the epoxy to all the staves at once. While Scott applied that first bit of epoxy I mixed the batch of thickened epoxy.

The plan was to repeat yesterday's dry fit and just add the extra step (or two) involving the epoxy. What could go wrong?

Things didn't go quite as planned and we had to handle the staves a bit more than I thought we would, but there just wasn't any other way to apply epoxy to the opposite edges. Once we had both edges of all five staves coated, we applied the thickened epoxy to one edge (of all staves). I put it on, Scott spread it out evenly.

We then laid the staves on their sides, pushed them together, lined up the reference line (pencil line drawn across the width of the blank during yesterday's dry fit), and clamped everything together. After the three horizontal clamps were tightened (not a lot of pressure), we clamped the blank flat with two sets of cauls (yesterday's new word!). One more bit of tightening the clamps and we were ready to wipe up excess epoxy squeezed from the joins on both sides of the blank. We got most of it, but I need to figure out how to be neater working with this epoxy. I am afraid I have left myself "extra" sanding to remove the excess epoxy we were not able to wipe up.

Here is how the whole thing looks right now:





I will be able to scrape more of the excess epoxy in the morning before it sets up completely. The blank will stay clamped until at Saturday evening, possibly until Sunday morning. Shaping should begin Sunday afternoon.

I asked Scott to think about what we could do differently to improve the process because we still have the centerboard to laminate. There are more staves and they are nearly two feet longer than the rudder staves. We'll definitely need to mix larger batches of epoxy, and I think we may try leaving the inside staves clamped together to apply epoxy to both edges.

Thinking back on the process, nothing really went wrong. Things could have gone better, but that is what practice and experience will do for you. By the time we have enough practice and experience to really know what we are doing with this laminating process, there won't be any laminating left to do!