Old Sailfish/Sunfish Rudder Blade Question

[Alan S. Glos]

OK, here is a chance for Sunfish Forum readers to nerd-out on Sailfish/Sunfish trivia:

The first wood Sailfish and Sunfish rudder blades were low aspect, almost rectangular "elephant ear" shapes. I have bought/sold/and gifted several of them in my
20+ years of messing about in this market. See photos of the latest find that I plan to gift to Kent Lewis, aka "Signal Charlie". All of these rudders I have seen have a small hole in the middle of the blade with a nice mahogany plug that fills in the hole. The question is why the hole in the first place? My best guess is that it has something to do with how the blades were produced. Maybe the rough cut rudder blank with a template on top was bolted down to a base through the hole and a router was used to follow the template to make the final shape, and then the hole was repaired with a mahogany plug. But this is only a guess.

Does anybody actually know why these old blades had a hole in them? If you don't know, feel free to be creative (or lie like a rug.)

Alan Glos
Cazenovia, NY

 

[signal charlie]

That's where gps antenna attahced. Or the gronicle..

 

[mixmkr]

If your rudder catches on fire from some hot sailing, you can pop the plug and insert your fire extinguisher hose, without exposing yourself directly to the flames.

 

[signal charlie]

-The plug is the key, the question is why is the rest of that wood all around it?

-Al and Cort had a time machine and put that there to confuse us, planning to travel forward and see our reaction.

-Provision for tiny stern thruster, but the Class Association disallowed it.

 

[tag]

it's a test hole for a lead weight like the Super Porpoise rudder. they started with a really small piece of lead.

 

[Webfoot1]

Most likely some type of gang router. If you had a couple rudder blades to compare side-by-side you might see that they are consistant enough that they were not shaped by hand.

 

[L&VW]

Beat me to it.

Looking like a row of walnut 2x4s, "blanks" of wood are lined up in a row of ~10, spun fast, and all are cut simultaneously to make rifle stocks.