Kaimusailing

The big job of building new crossbeams at positions 2 and 3 was lurking ahead and I wasn’t enthusiastic about starting. The old crossbeams had to be cut apart and removed, but first the crossdeck that relied on the beams for support had to be supported by struts. Then the lumber had to be milled to the correct width and scarfs cut on the ends.
.
I did a small epoxy job on the starboard sternpost top gudgeon, filling it with “glue strong” where there was a void, and fairing it with the chocolate colored microsphere mix. I was using small round bowls from the dollar store (4 for a dollar) and my straight bladed trowels did not conform to the bowls. I made some DIY trowels out of some flat plastic that came from kitty litter pails. I put one of the bowls upside down over the plastic, ran a magic marker around the lip, cut out the round circle, and then cut the circle in half, producing two halfmoon shaped plastic trowels. They worked great. The round part fit the bowl and allowed mixing the fairing mix thoroughly, and then the straight edge part worked as well as the other straight edge trowels had.
.
The “glue strong” mix was made in a zip lock bag and the silica:milled fiber filler was mushed together with the resin right in the bag until it was the right consistency. Then it was squeezed through one of the bag’s corners, cut off just a bit, into the void in the gudgeon. The void was created when a layer of roving shifted, then hardened up like that, like a fold.
.
The port rudder was mounted very temporarily with wooden dowel pieces as rudder pivots, and the fit was examined and the rudder marked where it had to be relieved to allow movement hard over to hard over. All the cutting was done on the rudder, not on any of the gudgeons. The rudder was then taken down and cut with multitool, jig saw, and portable bandsaw. The edge of the cuts were right angles and they were rounded off with the trim router and a round off bit, then shaped further with the surform file and angle grinder with big 7“ flap disc.
.
The glue strong/microsphere mix was filed and sanded, then another layer was applied. The resin for that mix was first used to prime the rudder edge, then prime the gudgeon, then wet out small pieces of glass cloth on the rudder edges. The remaining resin was filled with the microspheres and a little bit of silica. Although only 1 1/2 oz. of resin were mixed initially, there was fairing mix left over when it was done.
.
The picture is of the port rudder temporarily pinned in place.