Hi, all,

Well, it was an adventure, and a nail-biter, too, as you'll see below.

I'd been in contact with an outfit which did stationary journal machining -
they had 4 people involved in our case! - but they stopped being responsive
before ever giving me a ballpark idea of the cost. Just getting it there,
if I didn't rent a car which could accommodate this rudder, would have been
a few hundred bux, and the same back here.

So, as they weren't interested beyond the novel challenge, apparently, after
a couple of weeks of no response to the phone call I had with the guy who
quotes costs, nor a response to my email a week into it (no reply to that
for over a week, now), I went on with plan A.

That had been to thoroughly clean the area and apply Devcon Plastic Steel.
That had been recommended in my conversations with several shops, but I'd
also had something else referred as being even better than that.

That was Belzona. Lots of research led me to believe that it was entirely
up to the task, but it was available only in commercial quantities. So,
while intriguing, I abandoned that some months ago.

A friend I've known from the internet for nearly 10 years offered to let me
put it on his trailer and pull it over to his back yard, and do what was
needed for thorough cleaning.

That was to sandblast it, then pressure wash it, then heat it, and then
solvent wash it, just before applying the epoxy.

However, first we had to get it on the trailer, and because the travel lift,
as this yard is slap full, has been parked over the boat in front of us, we
had to get the lift out of the way to get the trailer near the rudder. The
blocks we'd used to support the rudder upside down while we worked on the
bottom of the rudder (as seen in another post) were still here.

I've become adept at walking the rudder along with the assistance of someone
moving the two pieces of wood I used to keep it off the ground, so getting
the rudder to the trailer wasn't difficult. I also relied on my experience
with getting the rudder down in the first place, combined with my "walking"
skills, to have that sucker in the bed in about 3 minutes flat.

However, the guy who moved the lift, leaving it idling in order to pull it
back in right away, saw what we were doing and said that I needed to take
that to a particular machine shop, as they did that sort of thing all the
time.

So, we did. We had visions of this being the same sort of thing as we'd
been trying to get done, above, or, if not, at least, something they did all
the time, and we could just let them handle it.

The short story of that is that they don't do THIS sort of thing, but
similar stuff, and they use Belzona for the cure to the problem. Concurrent
to our arrival, there was a guy struggling to try to spray paint a new
fabrication outside. In speaking with the owner about OUR job, we learned
that the owner was extremely frustrated with his paint experience. Again
shortening the story, as my friend happens to be a paint rep for marine and
aircraft, he got them sorted out in very short order.

As a result, the dregs of the container of Belzona 1111 resin and hardener
that the owner gave me came gratis. Oops! I haven't a clue how to use this
(other than it's 3-1, and that the owner said to really push it into the
pits with my fingers before smoothing out). So, off we go to sandblast and
pressure wash. My friend insisted it would be fine just laying it down on
the bed, sticking the shaft out over the edge, dropping the tongue, and
flipping it over to do the other side when I'd finished with the first one.
The sandblaster and pressure washer were commercial quality, so I have no
doubt that the surface was prepped and evacuated of debris properly, other
than as below, for which I compensated by kneeling on the ground to aim
upward as I came over the top of the shaft, and around the side.

I did my blasting (water and sand) that way, but was very unhappy with the
potential for real mishchief during application, and I was unhappy with the
potential for missing something on the edges (the part most horizontally
oriented on the circle as it lay). I left it in the bottom of the trailer
and headed back to the boat for dinner and a shower.

LOTS of looking, as Belzona is a commercial product, only, finally surfaced
an instruction sheet, along with some specifications (as far as I can tell,
they have no TDS).

YIKES! I'd have about 15 minutes, max, working time, and at the expected
temps, it would be ready for machining or other mechanical shaping in about
an hour, getting harder by the minute beyond that. Fortunately, as it
turned out, if it were required, another coat could be put on any time up to
the kick point.

This was a real nail-biter, as everything we'd read suggested that this
truly was like steel, and that if we weren't right on it, we'd be forever
shaping it, to go with the very short work time.

As I didn't like the prospects for how it would turn out the way I left it,
the next day, when I came back to do the actual application, I brought the
large blocks from the boat to his house, stood the rudder up in the trailer,
and walked it down. Lashed to the stern, it was very secure, and a great
deal easier to see and manipulate.

Having already done the sandblasting and pressure washing, I heated it with
a torch to drive out any remaining salts, and let it cure to the point where
it could be touched. The specs on the Belzona were to use MEK for the
cleaner (and cleanup), so I liberally stipple-brushed the circumference for
15 minutes, until the pitted area took about the same time to evaporate as
the rest of the shaft (didn't want to shorten my working or
lead-in-to-sanding time by having a hot workpiece!).

While I was doing that, Lydia was preparing the dregs of the containers by
laying out strips on a sign board we'd pulled up 2 months after the
advertised event. The plastic corrugated material was an ideal mixing board,
and let me keep the strings straight and even. While I was setting those up,
and marking the 1" intervals from which I'd cut my 3 and 1 inch segments to
mix, Lydia taped the shaft above and below the pits area.

We were REALLY concerned that we'd have difficulty with the working time so
we watched the clock very closely. As it turned out, we had plenty of time.
The first layer went on, after much pushing-with-finger and my bondo-tool
troweling it out. When we watched it start to get firmer, we were convinced
that it wasn't really fully filled, and worse, if we were to achieve
anything resembling a rebuild of the slight thinning of the shaft (max about
8 thousandths) due to all the excessive tightening of the packing gland over
the years, we'd have to build out.

So, I cut myself another 3" resin and 1" hardener, mixed it all up, and
applied it over the first coat. Once it had started to firm, but well before
kicking, I used a 12" drywall knife vertically on the shaft, giving it the
basic round shape with no possility of dipping into the low area. Once that
was done, we then peeled off the tape. Fast forward about an hour, and I go
to sanding on it after having first peeled a little from the unpitted area,
waiting a bit and finding it so that a fingernail wouldn't get it.

Hm. Not only don't we have a real complete fill, we're a long way from
building out the thinned dimension. Worse, I don't think that we have a
really flat vertical surface, either. And, if we're going to add any, we're
unlikely to get any different results; worse, it's hard enough, now, that
we'd have to roughen it (sandblasting, pressure washing, etc.???).

While we ponder that, our friend offers us his air file. 18" long, it will
easily bridge the pitted area and should result in a flat vertical end
result. As the old unpitted sections would act as our guides, we should
also wind up round, if we keep at moving it all the time.

So, taking the 60grit we'd had along for the sander we thoroughly roughened
both the immediate area and all of the work we'd done, essentially leaving
all the pits filled, but relatively flat-topped, and very little material in
the thinned or other sections. We then reopen the cans into which we've put
the over-stock, remake our lines of product, and remix another coat. Apply,
inside a double thickness of tape, use the drywall knife again, and wait.
This time it looks VERY substantial, and after peeling off the tape, we can
see the very definite ridge over the full-dimension shaft. Plenty of
material, it certainly appears...

Again fast forwarding, the end result is absolutely stunning. We left it
longer, this time, before we sanded with the air file, and it was a great
deal more work, as a result, to get the material off. I had great
trepidation about how successful we'd been, as we were, of necessity, sort
of slopping around with this massively vibrating tool, but in the end,
working with a micrometer, slightly (we're talking 1-2 thousandths) higher
areas were reduced. With the undamaged/untreated areas of the shaft acting
as riders/guides, and the fact that I was using paper which wasn't much
bigger than the repair area), in the end, the diameter of the shaft is
identical from top to bottom, measured in three or more places/radians on
the repair section. I had to do it umpteen times to believe it. Not a
half-a-thousandth off...

I'm not really happy about the slight indentation left by the drywall knife,
apparently, but as it's fully round, and that's a very shallow depression, I
believe that the grease we'll use will take care of that part.

Some finishing work with the rouge wheel, and some teflon waterproof grease
to go with the new packing I already have in the spud nut, along with, once
we remount it, centering (as discussed in a prior) the shaft in the tube, I
believe, will put this issue to bed forever.

Not only am I confident that the pits are resolved, because we had to build
out the thinned section to achieve this, virtually all the area which will
be touched by the packing, as well as that above and below, which might be
affected by oxygen starvation in the future, is covered in this stuff -
which won't corrode or rust :{))

Pictures of this adventure are in this gallery:
http://justpickone.org/skip/gallery/...111-SandToFair

Once we got it home, we still had the issue of the shoe/gudgeon to confirm.
We had a new bearing machined, replacing the inner (side-to-side) bearing
and the top (thrust) bearing in a single piece, becoming a "hat" bearing.
I'd also, previously, dry-fit the shoe and used a 3/8" bolt with slots cut
in it, acting like a low-grade tap, to both open up, where it was very tight
(recall that one of the mounting bolts had been cut off rather than mounted
properly, in the construction of this rudder mount), and confirm the exit to
the now-deeper countersink that I'd had machined so that the machine screws
would seat below the surface (to be filler-ed over). Once that was done, I
had a continuous thread path for the bolt to match up to, going from the
countersink to the tapped area opposite.

So, we raised the rudder and put on the shoe. A bit of messing with the
angle of the jackstand under the shoe led to fair (with some pressure on the
head to force the outcoming end to the right place in the two which needed
help) bolting of the new bolts I'd bought, so we dropped it again.

Pictures of this exercise in this gallery:
http://justpickone.org/skip/gallery/...Reinstallation

Once we've finished up the sal****er weep we have in the skeg (fiberglassing
with chop and Cabosil and sanding back to the curve I so carefully
developed), we'll lay on another layer of glass over the curve and the
top/exit of the rudder tube. Pix of that will be later, but you can see the
hole and what we've done before that to ready for the last bits of
fiberglassing, at the end of he
http://justpickone.org/skip/gallery/...ents&start=134

When that's finished, we'll mount the rudder and - finally - commence to
putting on 30 or more mils of epoxy barrier coat! Phew.

L8R

Skip

--

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
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