Rudder repair

[TomM]

I have a 73 Laser with wooden rudder. I jammed he rudder against the dock while mooring today and split the joint between the top (as the rudder is retracted out of the water) piece of wood and the middle piece (photo attached). Can I repair this ... ? If anyone has a recommendation on this.. I'd appreciate it. I have some woodworking skill, and was thinking with a biscuit cutter and some waterproof wood glue I could repair this.

Thanks for your suggestions...

 

[cskudder]

I also have a '73 Laser with wood blades - I think it should be repairable. It appears as tho it has split along a previously glued seam, which hopefully will leave you with clean, solid wood on both sides.

The one piece of advice I'd pass along, from my own experience gluing a piece that split off my daggerboard: do you very best to make certain that the wood is solid on both sides of what you're gluing, and to identify any secondary or additional splits in the wood, beyond the main one that broke. On mine, there were a couple additional cracks, and it broke again along one of these secondary cracks. I'm guessing you'll want to either remove as much wood as you need to, to get down to solid wood before gluing; or alternatively, glue this complete break first, and if there are more cracks for which you'd have to remove more wood than you're comfortable, then manually open up those other cracks, or even purposely break it again along them, so that you can glue them too, and end up with a real solid single unit.

I used a waterproof epoxy glue from the local hardware store and it's held well.

Hope it helps,
C

 

[racinglasers]

Yeah I think it will glue just fine as it seems to be split along a seam.

Probably have to seperate it completely to get glue on both sides. Delicate clamping job so as to not flatten the trailing edge.

It's not a stress point (unless ramming the dock ) so maybe does not require a biscuit.

 

[203]

I have a wood rudder on an older Laser, just finished fixing it up for the grand kids. The splits were similar to what you have, plus a big divot out of the bottom corner. I flexed the cracks, allowing them to absorb the 1 hour epoxy I used... they soaked it right up. then just allowed it to sit over night and then sanded the bump off. The divot was a bit harder. I used some packing tape to make a form that followed where the rudder should be, then filled it with West System epoxy resin/harder ( 105/205 I believe ) and some very small fiber strands. When it hardened, I shaped it back to the original shape. In a few years I'll report on how badly grand kids can damage this kind of repair (c: ..