Starboard planking progress

Made slow progress this week, due to work committments -- was getting home after dark most nights. So much for my boasting about hardly missing any days working on the boat. :) As of Saturday morning, I only had about three feet of lower hull planked. This is where I'm at now:

Only about one more foot to go on the lower hull. I'll keep working at it this week. My goal before I quit working outside for the winter is to at least get this hull half planked and laminated, move the port hull half back into the tent on top of the mold, and maybe start doing bulkheads. Getting the hull joined this year probably won't happen, I think.

I am starting to get into winter "small project mode". Earlier this week I was puttering around in the garage trying to put together a rudder gudgeon mold. Not that I need it right now, it just looked kinda cool and easy to do. Yesterday I finished the mold; here it is with the G10 tube and inner foam piece in place:

I left the inner foam piece somewhat high, about 1 1/4" instead of 1". My mold is 1 1/2" high (two 3/4" layers), but this isn't a big deal. The foam piece is held securely by a screw through the backside of the mold. My neighbor helped out with his drill press again to do the hole for the G10 tubing (thx Bill).

Here is the first gudgeon, partway through laying down the multiple layers of A glass:

During the unmolding:

After unmolding:

Obviously it needs to be trimmed and cleaned up, before the carbon lamination can be done.

My second gudgeon broke loose from the tube during unmolding...

...giving me the opportunity to do another one - but once you have the mold, you can do one of these in about ten minutes. The third one came out out of the mold just fine, and I now have two gudgeon blanks ready to go.

I probably shouldn't be playing with this rudder stuff, when I have other jobs left undone (like joining my daggerboard case). But it was quick, easy, and fun, so oh well.