Arts & Crafts & Sandinsanity Returns

Today started out with a few Arts & Crafts. Making a rubber gasket for the rudder shaft stuffing box.

1/4" rubber for gasket

Prety simple but you'd be amazed how many people don't know how to make a gasket.

Cut hole for shaft

Bought these handy hole punches at Princess Auto. Indispensable for this king of work. The gold coloured sharpie shows up well on the black rubber.

Looking down with rudder box in place

Ready for installation (not yet though)

Next thing I had to do was scrounge through my collection of bronze fasteners. I got these from a generous fella on the boating forums. Probably coulda used more but didn't want to seem greedy.

Small collection of bronze fasteners.

Some of these will be used for the swim platform and the bronze screws for the rudder stuffing box as shown above. The others I don't know yet. I also received a few stainless steel screws suitable for holding the engine in place.

What it all looks like mocked up.

Mocked up

This backing block will get at least one layer of carbon fiber and a few layers of glass. It'll definitely be strong. 

Next step onto fairing the rudder (again). I've ordered the carbon fiber for it. Would like to do a resin infusion on that so keep an eye out here for more details.

And today's special feature. The Sandinsanity Returns!

Standby....