Rushing some projects for a camping trip

With a camping trip approaching quickly I needed to get a working rudder. I had gotten the new head stock ready to glue up, but still needed to mount the hardware and the tiller. So I split my time and worked a bit on another rudder I bought at a swap years ago that happened to fit while I worked on the actual Islands 17 rudder. As always, I try to have a couple extra projects whenever I break out the epoxy, so in addition to playing with the rudders, I glued down the manu pieces on the Ulua canoe and then filled the screw holes and added glass reinforced fillets to the Ulua motor mount.


The swap meet rudder has a nice (slightly dinged) mahagony blade and hefty oak cheeks. The hardware is nice thick stainless. Even the nut to tighten the blad had a nice bit of bar welded to it for purchase. The tiller was split in the back, so I wrapped the bolt in an old latex glove, mixed some thicked epoxy and filled the 1/4" split, then wrapped some glass tape around the end. Ok, worse comes to worse I'd have a rudder.

Then I figured out some spacers and glued up the new head stock for to replace the Islands 17 rudder.

I used rough exterior ply, but given that it is epoxy jointed and glass reinforced on the corners I'm pretty sure it will hold hold. Especially once it gets a couple coats of epoxy to seal then paint. Need to round the corners a bit I think. I keep telling myself it isn't a museum piece, but this part is pretty ugly. May spend some cycles filling and sanding it so it isn't too embarrasing.

It is nice to have those manu blocks on. Now I can do the finish sanding and shaping on the gunnels, as well as the manu blocks. From there it is just some finish sanding and maybe some light fill coats/more sanding before I can varnish! While that is going on, I may plug away at the sailing bits and safety ama.  Actually, now that I may be using the swap meet rudder on my Islands 17, I need to add one more item - a lee board. The rudder blade was what I had planned on using for the Ulua board, oh well!