old wood rudder- replacing thru bolt

cskudder

cskudder

Active Member
I have a '73 boat with the original wood rudder, and the original thru bolt. Time to replace that with a bigger one. The rudder has a SS sleeve thru which the old bolt passes. The new 1/4" bolt obviously isn't gonna go thru that.

Do I just drill out a bigger hole, seal the inside of the hole with something, and put it together? Or do I want a bigger sleeve? If a sleeve, where do I find that?

thanks
 
I am redoing about 10 of my clubs lasers, all scattered around in the years they were made, but mostly wooded rudders. I decided to make it so all the bolts were the same size, so i drilled out the head and blade to the current size, and put the newer bolts through. Probably not legal, but my club just uses them to teach kids to sail, just needed to be functional, and uniform.
 
i have no idea where to get bigger sleeves. did you think of sealing around the sleeve and still using the 1/4" bolt? If you use some good epoxy I think it might work out well for you.
 
Well I drilled them out before I re varnished them, so that helped to seal a little, then I used the bolts with the plastic sleeves in place of the metal original sleeves.
 
You don't need to replace the sleeve - that's the point of the larger bolt.

Drill out ruddeer and rudder head to the new size, seal the hole in the wood with a touch 'o epoxy, let dry, reassemble, and done.

Use a stainless bolt with "aircraft" (nylon insert) nut to hold the tighness you set and not vibrate loose.
 
As I'm thinking about it; I'm not sure I needed to drill anything. I think removal of the old plastic sleeve may have been enough by itself to allow for insertion of the new "useful size" bolt.

PS: Bradley - I'm getting lots of these "your message is too short" messages; somehow entered text is being dropped somewhere.
 
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