Re: NACA-0014 Rudder Modification Underway

Hey Bob, hey Mike, THANKS.

Sometimes a man reads a thread just too many times. It follows him into his sleep and it enters into his dreams. And such was the NACA-0014 thread.

I am no surfboard shapper. My wife is a hell of an artist ( see her work at www.nikkimaloof.com :), but I lack any and I mean any ability to free form things. And because of THIS talent my rudder project was going to have to come with training wheels.

Here's the blow by blow of what I did - 

Step 1: Read this

Step 2: Create a NACA 0014 template (the Internet can help you with this)

Step 3: Make a bunch of these out of wood

Step 4: Make sure the wooden foils are all the same

Step 5: Do this to fit the wood templates onto the rudder

Step 6: Mount templates and space them out

Step 7: Glue templates and foam core with thickened epoxy

Step 8: Sand, sand, sand (I used an orbital sander - 100 grit)

You will notice that this method creates gaps on the leading edge because of the foil template overhang. Several people that have created their own foiled rudders have modified their leading edge with a denser material to protect the rudder from impact damage. I chose to fill this negative space with a thickened epoxy hence creating a super dense leading edge. Of course this sucked to sand to shape but I am very confident that I created an impact resistant edge. In addition I also put several extra layers of glass on the leading edge.

I hope this stuff isn't toxic.

Step 9: Glass, sand, and paint

The rudder project is not totally completed. I used a pretty heavy fiber glass cloth and after sanding and painting you could still see the weave in the cloth. I am not happy wth this finish so I'll be revisiting this project again.

Functionally the rudder was amazing and worked perfectly.