The rudder mount went together pretty smoothly although there are many steps involved. Below are some pictures I took at various stages of the part fabrication.
The gudgeon mold worked out pretty well. On the first part some of the thickened putty leaked around the G10 tube. So on the second part I made sure some of the glass reinforcement was pushed up into this area. This fixed that problem. I used a little hot melt glue to keep the foam in place.
I removed the parts from the mold when they are not fully cured. This is not just impatience. I like to use a knife to clean up the part ,cut off the flashing, etc. This is harder to do when its really hard.
The molded gudgeons are wrapped in carbon fiber for strength. I only have 9oz carbon unidirectional so I had to increase the number of pieces to get to the correct total weight. Only issue I had was in keeping the many layers on top of each other. But all is good in the end.
The finished gudgeons are then glued into the foam web. I found that a tightly fitting wood dowel was sufficient to keep the two parts aligned and clamped into place.
The part is then wrapped in fiberglass. I used a number of pieces of the s-glass cloth. It is pretty drapable and I did not have much of a struggle to get everthing covered. I just prefer to make sure that the part and the cloth is wet with resin before performing my hand lay up.
When the covering is still green and tacky to touch I applied the remaining reinforcements as per the plans requirements. I had no peel ply on hand so there is probably a bit more resin in this part than needs be...
The finished part weighs 1.27 lbs. It's not really that pretty but most of it will be buried under the cockpit floor.
Now it looks like I have to start thinking about the rudder fabrication. This will be a bigger job.
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