Well here we go again! Hope it works better than yesterday, but doing this from another puter, so don't know whether I'll be able to attach the images that I've sent to myself.
Finally cleared my order pile and was able to get back to Albert.
I found that when I fitted the urethane skeg to the fibreglass moulded skeg, it was far too tight, and having worked with urethane for an awful lot of years, chose to make it a slide fit.
If the urethane cast skeg had been a heavy interference fit, there would be a chance of it splitting in time, particularly in winter when everything has a habit of shrinking and turning brittle!
Anyway, spent a lot of time filing away lots of gelcoat until I had a nice light interference fit, then i found that the hole in the skeg for the rudder was too far back, so I ground about 1mm off the front edge on the linisher and now the rudder lines up perfectly. This also meant that by sliding the skeg forward, I had to remove more gelcoat from the back of the fibreglass skeg, as the pocket in the urethane skeg wasn't long enough after the removal of the mm or thereabouts. After talking to Phill about this thickening of the gelcoat, he suspects that the fibreglass moulder was not tightening the mould enough, allowing it to thicken in that area.
Another minor problem was that the round flange on the skeg where the rudder post hole is, needed to have a bit removed and thinned down a tad, as when it was all fitted up, the rudder was jamming and not swinging freely. I also deepened the hole in the skeg a little as well, and this helped to free things up. It now lines up perfectly and after the rudder is finally installed and the shaft greased, there should be little or no load on the servo.
In the interim since my failed attempt at this post yesterday, I have since applied two coats of sealer to the in hull structure, so now it starts to get serious!
Once this bit is in the hull and bogged in, there is no going back, so we have to make sure we get it right first time around!
More as it happens.
Ian.