I am pretty sure that when the Romans got to the end of building Harian's Wall an officer declared:
"Aye, that'll do!"
"You said 'aye'!", retorted one of the soldiers
"Aye, I did, whit of it?", the officer replied
"It's a bit, you know, Scottish!", the soldier observed
"Ah ken, so what!"
"You are a Scottish spy!"
At this point the rest of the soldiers dropped their shovels and proceeded to cut the officer to ribbons. This explains why there are many holes in Hadrian's wall to this day.
Similarly with my rudder there came a point where I called it done. I realised that I was striving towards perfection but I recognised that even if it did get the surface absolutely perfect then it would still be covered by a generous layer of antifoul.
Back to the build process. In previous essays I showed how the sheet of plywood was transformed into the rudder and with a little light engineering the tiller was attached. The next stage was to laminate the wooden rudder with class fibre and marine grade polyester resin.
For the purposes of this story I will rename Marine Grade Polyester Resin to "unicorn tears" because for the cost of the stuff you would be forgiven in thinking that is what is was made from.
Once again I find myself in Angus' workshop. It was the only space that was large enough and could be kept warm enough to work the resin properly. He laid out a sheet of polythene to cover his workbench as we both knew there was going to be drips and splashes.
Now, I like working with glass fibre and resin, I find it a rewarding process but it is fraught with errors if you get it wrong. The resin itself is workable for around 15 minutes then it goes waxy, then rock hard. The waxy stage is the worst as it will not do what it is told, so it is imperative that you get it well worked in while it is still runny.
With this in mind we physically rehearsed what we would do, both working round the bench in tandem, painting on resin and working the fibre into place. It must have looked very odd to a bystander to see two grown men pretending to paint and move but trust me it was a very good idea. After we had done our rehearsal, paid for our Equity membership and spoken to our agents, we started the filthy business of making it real.
Since we were both very busy I was not able to get any action shots until the very end. Looks like a dog's breakfast doesn't it? Trust me again on this - that was very much the desired result. We laminated one side and dabbed tentatively with our brushes to get it all flat.
Here you can see Angus beginning the trimming of the edges. I am happy to borrow Angus time, but I refuse to have him use resource on my projects. I have supplied him with generous amounts of stanley knife blades, rag cloths, sanding belts and whatever else he consumes on a job. To my simplistic mind this is only right and proper to do. When he asked me to order some 80 grit sanding belts, I ordered 20 belts of multiple grades. It is the right thing to do.
After the first side was complete we took a break and sat in his garden. Angus' wonderful wife was relaxing in a hammock in a custom built hammock pagoda, surrounded by blooming flowers and with a cat dozing on her lap. "Hard life?", I asked, she sipped from her glass of chilled white wine, "You have no idea!" she replied. It would appear that Angus' look after their spouses in the most diligent and attentive manner possible.
We did the second side and once it had gone hard we left it to hang outside to set. At that point I had to leave it for the day as I was teaching kids how to powerboat.
A few days later I got this picture from Angus:
He had clearly got fed up bumping into the rudder and decided to crack on smoothing it down with his sander. It really felt amazingly smooth to the touch. Fortunately for me the weather had picked up so I came and collected it and set to completing the final touches at home in the sun.
I had purchased a wide woven ribbon of glass fibre and some more unicorn tears. I carefully worked the ribbon around the entire edge of the rudder.
You can see that I partially covered the bush and I also painted the excess unicorn tears onto the flat surface of the rudder to make the levels balance out.
It was an absolute joy to work away on this in the warm conditions. Sealing the edge, making it doubly tough and working the surface smooth.
I layered on a final coat of unicorn tears and let it set. I permitted myself a small glow of pride at this point.
I'm pretty pleased with that. So now it was time to take this carefully shaped wood with its hard outer layer and cover it up so nobody can see it.
I took some of the polythene (that really should be polyethylene but we are all to lazy to call it that) sheet and created an straight edge.
(for some reason I cannot get this picture to be portrait. Apologies for the neck sprain)
See the guy in the background with the can? That's the sod that suggested I buy a boat for £200. That's the git that has stopped me sitting on my arse on a weekend. I am very fond of him really. I gave him the can to shake, it seemed appropriate.
And there it is with the finished paint job. I used acrylic spray paint in classic Ford transit van white. The finish is not perfect but you would be pushed to find the errors.
In the week that I waited to pick up the rudder from Angus I finished painting the tiller handle with dick oil and polished the old fittings to a lustrous shine. I also made a couple of other bits for my boat but you already know about them.
I am guessing that you think it is all perfect and complete, but you would be wrong. The white part, that looks so dashing is in fact at the wrong angle. I shall pretend that this is entirely deliberate, I will even suggest that having an angled line is the preferable undercoat to the antifoul that will be applied. But I would be lying. Fortunately it does not matter in the slightest as all I needed was for it to extend below the water line.
That my fine semi-aquatic friends is that. Done, for the lifetime of the boat.
I said to myself "Aye, that'll do!" and then quickly looked over my shoulder for angry Romans.
