Brief Description: Bent rudder bow, drilled rudder spar
Bend the 1/2" tubing for the rudder bow around the 36" diameter bending jig and then adjusted the resulting semi-circle to fit the curve drawn on the gird. Some of the curved tube needed to be bent to a smaller radius and some to a larger radius.
After the rudder bow had been bent to a close approximation of the drawn curve, I marked the centerline of the spots on the 1" rudder spar tube that needed to be drilled. Where the rudder bow ends at the bottom of the spar, only a hole on the rear side of the spar is needed. At the very top of the rudder spar, a slot is cut to accept the rudder bow.
The plans call for the rudder spar to be 43.5" tall. Since the 1" tube is 44" long, I'm not going to worry about trimming it to that length.
The 1/2" tubing for the rudder bow was not trimmed either which gives me a little more chord towards the bottom of the rudder.
I then chucked the dowel rod in my drill and spun the wood on a piece of folded sandpaper in my hand to reduce the diameter so it would fit inside the 1/2" tubing. Once a snug fit was acheived, I hammered 3" long pieces inside each end of the rudder bow and sanded them flush.
