A Project Named Clancy - IX. Daggerboard and Rudder

The rudder and daggerboard make good side projects while working on the hull.   

The rudder is a kick up design, with the blade of the rudder able to pivot up when in shallow water or beaching the boat.  The plans call for the blade to be made of sheet aluminum.  I had plenty of spare 1/2" plywood around and used that instead.  

The rudder blade gets cut out with a jigsaw.

To give the rudder an "airfoil" shape, a 1/4" roundover bit is used at leading edge of the rudder, while a power plane is used to give the trailing edge a long, gradual taper. 

For the upper half of the rudder, two rudder cheeks are cut out -- to achieve symmetry, two pieces of plywood can be stacked and both cheeks cut at the same time.  The inside faces are coated with epoxy and sanded smooth.

A 1/2" piece of plywood is cut into a spacer to go between the two cheeks (the end grain of the spacer gets sealed in epoxy too!).

The mating surfaces are then slathered with slightly thickened epoxy and glued together.

The plans give dimensions for a tiller.  I went with my own design, cut out of 1" sapele, with big 1/@ roundovers.

The daggerboard is a simple trapezoidal shape, cut out from 3/4" plywood.  The lower corners are radiused, and, like the rudder, it gets shaped into a airfoil-like cross-section.

All of the rudder parts and the daggerboard get sealed with a few coats of unthickened epoxy, and are then sanded smooth.  Imagining the loads from doing dry capsize recoveries, I went the extra mile and put a layer of fiberglass on the daggerboard.

Per the plans, the daggerboard handle is a simple affair.  I made mine a little dressier, making it from padauk...

...routing a slot in it for the daggerboard to slip in...

...radiusing the upper edges, and routing in some grooves on the sides for finger grips.

Once coated in epoxy and sanded smooth, the handle is glued to the daggerboard.