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I've noticed a fair amount of chat about overstern rudders lately. There's the Avon Descent discussion where many skis are taken down this river. There was also the replacement overstern rudder for the Epic V10.
 Martin Gunda's carbon overstern rudder
I've always been interested in this aspect and wanted to try it out. Given I paddle a V10L ultra and have an older Fenn millenium I opted to play around with the Fenn as I've taken this boat down the Avon and also some local rivers.
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I chose to make the rudder system from Carbon and used balsa cores where necessary. To shape the tail end for the Fenn I took some kiddies air drying clay and made a mould of the tail section and then used carbon to make the base. The rudder was shapped from balso in the typical wing shape and then covered with a single layer of Epoxied Carbon. An Extra layer was placed near the swivel hole.
My best friend was the high speed Dremmel cutter that served to trim all the carbon.
To cut a long story short this little project kept me busy for a while but turned out quite nicely. I've attached a few photos of the rudder and may just help those willing to give it a try. Probably easier to buy one ready made but pleasure was had in making this.
I've tried it in the rivers and all is well. This weekend I will be doing a 28km down river race and will see how it performs.
(All pics by Martin Gunda)
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I hope it works well. I built a rudder and discovered there's more engineering than meets the eye. My first design could rotate too far and then could not be returned by pressing the other pedal. This would happen when waiting for a race to start. Once moving, the water pressure could straighten it out. After breaking the cable attachment several times trying to straighten the rudder, I had to add stops to prevent rotation beyond the useful range.