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Rigging Updates
by Tidmarsh Major
After sailing my prototype Skat
for a season, I've made a couple of changes to the rigging and hardware.
As astute Duckworks readers may remember, I built pintles and gudgeons
out of 1/8" flat brass and 1/4" brass rod. Bsically I had
gudgeons on both transom and rudder and inserted a long pintle to hold
it all together:
(click images to enlarge)
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While the arrangement worked, It was a
bit of a hassle to insert the rod while holding the rudder in place. I
also dropped the hitch pin while unshipping the rudder in the surf at
the beach (miraculously, I didn't lose it). To make the rudder easier
to ship, I've converted it to a more conventional pintles and gudgeons
arrangement. Since I drilled the holes in the gudgeons slightly
oversize, I used 5/16" brass rod left over from making rope-stropped
blocks for the pintles. First, I threaded the end of the rod: |
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The wooden block didn't have quite enough grip to keep the rod from
twisting as I cut the threads (even with a groov on the underside to
increase surface area), so I bent the end of the rod to give leverage
against the workbench. Forgive the poor quality of the workbench--I
rescued it from a trash pile to leave outside while building the boat.
I just can't bring myself to throw it away yet.
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Once I had cut the threads, I cut the
new pintles to length. I cut the lower pintle to 2" beyond the threads,
and the upper one to 1.5" beyond the threads, to allow insertion of the
lower pintle before lining up the top one. I then used the poor
person's machine shop to round the ends: |
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I chucked the pintle into the drill and
clamped a file to the bench. Using a goodly amount of cutting oil, I
held the cut end against the file while the drill was spinning, moving
up and down to round the end:
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The result was a smoothly rounded end: |
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Here are the finished pintles, ready to
mount. They'll be inserted into the holes on the rugger gudgeon and
tightened down with bronze lock washers to keep them from loosening:
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Here's the finished hardware, ready to
launch (you can see a little of the new mainsheet arrangement as well): |
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Here's the finished hardware, ready to
launch (you can see a little of the new mainsheet arrangement as well):
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Last week was spring break, and I managed to get out on the water Sunday afternoon, making the break a success. The rudder proved much easier to mount and unmount. I'm still pondering on a means to lock it in place easily. The mainsheet also was an improvement, easing the amount of force needed to haul in the sail. The weather here was warm and sunny, with a good breeze most of the time I was out, though the breezes always seem to get alittle flaky here around 6 in the afternoon.
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On the forward shots, you can see the leather at the base of the mast extending above the deck, where I added chafe protection to the mast. So far it seems to be working, but a couple of hours isn't much of a test. |
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The water was muddy, as you can see, since we've had a good bit of rain over the past week. The sky was clear, however, and the early spring foliage is showing as the trees are just starting to leaf out. While out, I saw some migratory waterfowl (docks for Duckworks?) stopping by on their way north.
All in all, a nice afternoon to test the new rigging and a good end to spring break.
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