Dealing with stripped carriage bolt socket in rudder

[holstein]

Good morning Day Sailors !

During the maiden voyage of my DS1, I wan into a problem with the rudder.

The carriage bold in the friction adjuster on the rudder head began to spin.
After inspection, I found the the square notch in the aluminum plate had been rounded off.

Has anybody else run into this, and how did you correct it ?

Thanks
Bill H

[K.C. Walker]

I've got the stock fiberglass rudder head. However, if I was faced with this problem I would probably think about going up a bolt size or 2 and filing the aluminum square again. This would give you more bearing surface and hopefully would not round out again.

[UCanoe_2]

You could also fill the hole with epoxy, preferably with milled glass fibers mixed in for reinforcement. Cover the carriage bolt liberally with wax or grease, then insert in the hole. Remove the bolt when the epoxy sets up, but before it cures hard. Don't glue the blade to the rudder head.

[GreenLake]

You have an aluminum rudder head?

Going to a larger size bolt has the advantage that the new head is larger and will need to move more metal before it strips out the new hole. However, you may need to drill a larger hole into the blade. The problem with that is how to get it watertight without overdrilling and adding epoxy, before re-drilling a narrower hole.

If your rudder head is a simple flat piece of aluminum, you could simply glue (epoxy) a small disk on to the side of it. A disk, that is, that has the proper square hole in it. That could end up being a stronger repair than just trying to build up the stripped edges of the original hole.

You could most likely reuse the existing bolt, unless it's too short, in that case, you go up in length by 1/4".

If you do decide to simply reconstitute the "corners" in the original hole, check out the epoxy formulations for metal repair. From JB Weld to System Three's "MetlWeld". There are also epoxies that come with metal filings as filler.

Whatever you do, stay away from any form of 5-minute epoxy - those are not very strong, and apparenly weaken over time.