As well as the painting and fairing I have a couple of other tasks under way. After a long break I have been back working on the rudder and now have all the plywood layers of the two halves glued together ready for the stainless steel rudder stock to be glued in.
The two halves of the plywood rudder of our Didi 40 Cr ready for fitting to the rudder stock.
Before gluing in the stock in need to install the bearings in the hull as once the plywood is attached to the stock it will be too heavy to man handle around the hull. So today I used the laser level to project a vertical line from the underside of the cockpit floor to the centre of the keel. The pilot hole I drilled on the laser vertical came out exactly on the centre line “V” on the hull but for good measure I used a metal rod to check the vertical with the spirit level. Happy with the alignment I cut out the hole in the keel for the bearing to full size. Tomorrow I will do the same for the top bearing housing in the cockpit floor and then install the stock while the bearings are set in epoxy and laminated in place.
Checking the alignment of the rudder stock on our Didi 40 Cr.
Bottom rudder post bearing ready to glue into the keel of our Didi 40 Cr
The other task under way is the keel construction at a local steel fabricator. The job is progressing well now that we have made up very accurate templates from 1 mm steel plate to get a perfect shape. One side was plated in 3mm plate today. We started from the trailing edge and left the plate 300 mm overlenth so that we had some leverage to bend the plate around the tight curve at the front. We had to weld a long RHS to the plate to get the leverage required and as I pulled the plate into the base the welder tacked it in place. It looks a mighty fine job and I hope the second side goes as well tomorrow.
1 mm steel template for marking out the bulb bottom plate.
Didi 40 Cr keel bulb ready for plating with 3 mm plate.