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Hi,
Assuming one was daft enough to want to make a centreboard using the rather poor plywood centreboard you have as a pattern …
What would be the ideal timber? I was thinking 2″x 1″ strips of Yellow Cedar, but someone else suggested Mahogany … a third miscreant suggested alternate strips of yellow cedar and mahognay (but I suspect he was trying to make my life harder than needs be).
What say you? What is the ideal material for a nice glass-sheathed centreboard?
Hardwood planks for stiffness and strength and cedar to minimize weight. Use hardwood where it needs to be stiff and strong, at the leading edge. Two or three planks all the way to the deepest point then alternate with cedar to get the best compromise between strength and maximum weight.
Have a look at some Wayfarer CB pictures to get the idea. There are some on display here. And you may also get some good ideas from Philip Milanes. Unfortunately since Phil started selling his foils through chandlers his web-site went awful, you may have to follow some links to get to pictures of his foils.
Sounds fair enough, I shall try and obtain a bit oeach then, I did look into it once before, but went off the idea when faced with the price of timber. I shall have to look around a little more carefully, yellow cedar shoudl not be horrendously expensive. I did price up enough to do a rudder and centreboard from a UK supplier in Bristol about a year ago, but it was around £200 for the timber, which seemed excessive to me. I’ll have a better dig around for prices this time.
I have a nice big 8×4 CNC router, with vacuum clamping, so providing I can get the wood, milling it to shape shuold be the easy part. I have some 100mm sorfacing heads somewhere, so should be able to skim it to thickness in a jiffy 🙂
If you glue with Epoxy it will be stronger.
Turn the planks from a board, end for end on every other plank from that board, helps the wood to pull against each other and not all warp the same way!
If you make the blank with all light wood, your need to sheath it with grp matt and epoxy.
I may have some cedar which has been shaped each side with T&G grooves, fits together well and is 19mm thick if you fancy some.
PM me via this site as my email has been hacked and blocked.
CPSuonds interesting, I certainly was planning on glass sheathing it, for the stiffness.
I was acutely aware when I was trying to right a GP14 with a Milanes board how totally solid it was .. when I had the Wayfarer over on the grass for a bit of maintenaance, I cuold flex the centrebaord 6″ at the tip without even trying too hard, the old ply simply isn’t holding up. I did take it out and re-epoxy all the delaminated areas, but it still was not very stiff.
I’ll PM you about some cedar then, I was just eyeing up some mahogany on fleabay, but cedar would be nicer.
Right, it looks like the plan is in action … a 3m piece of 6″x2″ Cedar has been ordered for less than a kings ransom ( just over £50 ) from the nice people at Stones Marine Timber … which should yield 45m of 50mm x 19mm .. more than enough to make a new centrebaord and rudder although, save a few dings, the rubber is pretty good, no reason not to make a new rudder I guess while I am at it.
I’ll post pictures of the progress when there is some 🙂
Just a quick note to mention Stones Marine TImber ( http://www.stonesmarinetimber.com) who went “the extra mile” to get me what I needed at a decent price and with a touch of the “old fashioned service” that I thought was long gone from these shores.
I have no connection with the above, other than as a happy customer!
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