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For those of you who need to install the optional rudder on your kayak, you may have found that drilling the hole perfectly straight is a tricky task. Here's a good way to do it:

First up, I leveled my boat on the sawhorses. I used a level across the cockpit and hatch openings to get it fairly close. Then I used two spring clamps, a block of wood and a steel ruler to make myself a visual guide. (Shown in the left picture below.) You can adjust the angle of the vertical guide by moving the block on the bottom, and using different sized blocks. Now that I have a guide, I can line up the drill bit with the guide by eye easily. I also had a helper stand 90 degrees to my right and guide the bit that way. Sure enough, my hole ended up coming out perfect.

If you drill it and find that your rudder when placed in the hole is not plumb with the boat, all is not lost! There are a few things you can do. One is to simply fill the hole to the top with epoxy, and give it another go after it hardens. Another idea that caught my mind was one that I saw posted on CLC's Forum. The text of the message is as follows:

I was worried that my rudder hole would not be plumb and the rudder would be out of kilter. If this happened, I figured a fix: I decided I would coat the rudder spindle and surrounding rudder area with Johnson Floor Wax (epoxy doesn't stick to the wax, that is how I pull my stitch wires out when I build big dories). I would overdrill the hole, put some thickened epoxy in, push the waxy-rudder spindle into the hole before the epoxy cures, clamp the rudder true, then let the epoxy cure. After curing, I would pull the rudder out and sand-away the unwanted epoxy around the top.

Posted By: Bill Walker (bwalker@alaska.net) Date: Tuesday, 9 May 2000, at 8:38 p.m.

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