Robert Sutton has an interesting video of his rudder infusion for his W42 . 

His blog is at http://westsail42.blogspot.com/  and well worth the time to study his work on his W42 -- he started from a bare hull and deck - his will be the newest W42 when she is launched.

David Wiencke wrote:

Out of curiosity, anyone know when Westsail redesigned the rudder? Year or hull #? Was it a Crealock design change?

Seems I've seen photos of some boats with the "new" (square bottom) rudder, but not the glass gudgeons--a transition period?...or retrofited older boats? 

I suppose this question should be in Bud's column, but maybe he's watching and will chime in with some wisdom and advice.

We made the new rudder design about mid 1973.  The old one had mishmash fill (asbestos powder and polyester resin).  There was now a restriction on using asbestos, so we made a deal with Foss Foam in Costa Mesa to make a new rudder mold, using fiberglass skins and foam injected into the mold.  We changed the attachment design to use the fiberglass gudgeons and bronze pins rather than the stainless straps.  We also added area to the aft lower end of the rudder and used a straight line aft end, as well as cutting down the mid section width somewhat.

Gary Burton wrote:Bud, why was the rudder shape changed? Does it have to do with downwind steering or something else? Just curious..

We needed a new rudder mold when we decided to have Foss Foam make the rudders using a foam core rather than the mishmash core that was originally used by Kendall.  Bill Crealock suggested more rudder area down low on the rudder, and a shorter cord width for better steering control.  We also wanted to design away from the stainless pintals and gudgeons.  That's how the new rudder design came to be.

Bud

Jay Bietz and Bud Taplin,

I like the approach that "the deleted user" building that rudder took. I was wondering how I can align the rudder pivot pins in the fiberglass gudgeon type rudder. I originally planned to make a special fixture to install each of the bronze shafts by pressing them into mishmash lined pockets that were originally there, but are definitely out of "wack". This is still not the ideal way to go, as when removing the shafts out of those recesses, the excess mishmash will cause them to hang up. I decided to "fudge" them in and have the top and bottom lightly fastened to allow the mishmash to ooze slowly out before the  stuff hardens completely..

Westsail (in hindsight) could have made the continuous shaft by creating one like in the picture of the previous post. This makes for a nice in line bearing surface. To intercept the shaft screw holes, the center pin would have a predrilled hole made with a simple jig , as would the top and bottom one.. To remove a shaft, a long push bar ( for example when in Mexico, they have lots of rebar) would persuade the shaft to travel out of the hole.

At this writing, I am working on adjusting my center gudgeon to fit into the cutout in the rudder. I am a one man show and my back is killing me. I have a high success rate in getting the distances between the gudgeons and rudder recesses trimmed. It would have been easier with the continuous shaft hole.

Thanks for the author of the article and photos,

Mike Z