J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Rudder(s)

Made headway today, sorted out several key details on my tooling setup. Removed the leveling bolts and just went to blocks and wedges to position the blank. That allows the sliding fixture to move past the ends of the blank. Then the next giant leap was positioning the blank such that the centerline of the foil was even with the top of my rails. To do this and get the sliding fixture to actually ride on the rails I had to hog off a bunch of waste on the blank with a power planer and also create more clearance on the bottom side of the offset rails of the jig. Then it all started to work correctly.

Here is an image from the end of today's work:



You can see the foil shape is starting to get well developed. I think I will be finishing the leading edge with a hand plane. Trying to work with the router so far over on its side is very problematic and seems unnecessary.

This blank before I started working on it weighed in at 94 lbs. The old soggy J30 rudder weighed in at 75 lbs. The sawdust in my shop is currently ankle deep and I will be dumping the shop vac first thing tomorrow before I can even start the next round of cleanup. I am really curious what this wood core is going to weigh when it has reached its final shape.