I am making a windvane

[Alan H]

Here's the layup. There are two layers of 4-inch glass tape laid on with TAP Plastics marine epoxy in medium hardener....my usual go-to. The stuff is relatively idiot-proof...perfect for me!



In some of my other foils I have had to do a LOT of trailing edge cleanup, so this time I clamped it as you see it here. There's wax paper keeping the epoxy from bonding the wood pieces to the trim tab. The clamped trailing edge should be tight and waterproof AND it' 4-layers thick so I can sand and fair it.
This should....in theory be pretty smooth and need minimal fussbudgeting once I take the wax paper off.

[Alan H]

Here's a first look at the trimtab geometry. I wish I'd made the tab about 2 inches longer. About an inch of the bottom of the rudder will come off to mount the either steel or oak support there on the bottom. The overall rod length is exactly right, I just need about 2 more inches of foil. Grr.

trimtab-and-rudder-1.jpg

[Alan H]

Anyway, so I've been back and forth, what to do, what to do about the brackets? Use stainless steel straps, which can be unbolted so the whole thing can come off, or epoxy sturdy oak brackets to the rudder to hold the trim tab? Stainless steel underwater really needs zincs on it to stay in one piece. Stainless is also heavy, and the rudder and trim tab itself are already pretty heavy. Oak is cheap, and I have plenty of epoxy and 'glass. However, using stainless straps allows me to just unbolt the whole thing, tap in some hardwood plugs, slap some epoxy and paint on it and chalk it up to a learning experience if it doesn't work.

Well, Thanksgiving weekend got here and I wanted to make progress. Two things contributed to me deciding to 'glass the brackets to the rudder, rather than bolt them. 1.) I could make all the brackets, the strut and so on out of $14 worth of 4 inch wide, 1" oak, rather than $30 worth of stainless steel. I have the epoxy already and the cost for fasteners would be less. I'm facing some pushback over the SHTP ongoing expense, so opted to save a few $$ this time.... and 2.) Alan Steel was closed on Wednesday, when I went over to get the stainless. OK, then! Instead of getting nowhere all weekend, I opted to make the stuff out of wood and epoxy, UHMWPE and glass fiber.

First up was cutting out and gluing up the upper trim tab rod bracket, and also the strut at the bottom of the rudder that takes the weight of the trim tab.




While I was at it, I trimmed down the tiller for the Piper to the appropriate thickness.

Here's the upper trim tab shaft bracket. It will get a strap of 1" glass tape all round the outside edge. That's probably overkill, but hey. It's a little clunky-looking, I might put it on the saw again and make it a touch more svelte. it will only take side-to-side loads of probably 40-60 pounds, at most.




After cutting everything out, letting the epoxy kick off overnight, smoothing down the epoxy/sawdust spooge with a wood rasp and a bunch of sanding, the bracket tapped nicely into place. Yet more sanding on the rudder will be needed to get a good bonding surface for the glass tape. There's a pillow bearing that goes above the hole that the trim tab shaft goes through. The shaft goes through that bearing, it's pretty low friction.



Here's the lower strut, the piece that actually supports the weight of the trim-tab, which is probably about 10 pounds. It's oak, it will get wrapped in fiberglass. Where the trim tab shaft goes has now been cut back and the last thing I did today was make an UHMWPE "bearing" that goes right there, screwed to the oak with four s.s. wood screws. There's been some water intrusion into the rudder from cracks in the bottom fiberglass, so when I trimmed off the bottom inch, there was some drying-out to do. The doug fir core was fine, just needs a day or two or three to dry out. I helped it along with the heat gun a few times, today. Three lag bolts attach the strut into the bottom of the rudder, as well as a bunch of fiberglass holding all this in place.

[Alan H]

After much staring and debating...where to put the middle support bracket, I finally opted for a location which might get wet, but will more properly support the trim tab shaft....it's more in the middle. We'll see how the aluminum and bronze pillow bearing does, down there. I'll keep it oiled. if it croaks, I'll replace it with a block of UHMWPE with a half inch hole in it

Anyway, the two upper brackets are glassed on, as of today. I sanded off the paint, down to bare glass and used epoxy/sawdust to make a fillet. 1.5-inch tape went over that. The top of the antifouling paint is well above the waterline. The waterline is actually right where the top of the trim tab is. You can still see a hint of the line, in what's left of the antifouling paint on the rudder.



Looks like I got it pretty straight! The red thing is our patio umbrella, fresh out of the spin cycle on the washing machine.



Now there's more sanding to do, and then paint. Then I mount the shaft bearings. THEN I slather epoxy all over the endgrain at the bottom of the rudder and take the strut off and wrap it with fiberglass. Once everything kicks off, I crank down on the bolts holding the strut to the bottom of the rudder. It needs to dry out for a few days. Then I make up epoxy and sawdust spooge and shape it....put a layer of 'glass over the whole thing...wait....apply antifouling and call it good.

Oh, I need to do some microballoons/epoxy and sanding to the trailing edge of the trimtab, itself.

[Topgallant schooner]

Thoughts on windvanes, in particular if you have a transom mounted rudder.
If a trim-tap does not do it for you, maybe your vessel is unbalanced and it could be worthy to consider balancing the sailarea.
A trim-tap solution is so simple to build, you will build half a dozen before you have read this thread, more time to sail
If worried that you need more torque/power, scale up the tap-size and make it counterbalanced - consider also placing a bearing ball on the bottom of the axis reducing friction at lower cost than expensive hinges. Having crossed the atlantic (singlehanded) with a trim-tap solution, I am not worried as to the working of something made and mounted in less than 12 hours. On very fast boats, downwind with spinnaker/gennaker (I was sailing lightweight catamaran - 720kg) you get so close to wind speeds that there is not much for the wane to work with. Alas, sails are forward and you can easily set a storm jib on backstay (wishbone or tension/flatten with a boatmanshook) and run sheets via blocks directly to rudder.
I have used a variety of pendulum (Aries-style) windvanes also, in my experience, if you can balance your boat you can make most things work.

[Alan H]

Thoughts on windvanes, in particular if you have a transom mounted rudder.
If a trim-tap does not do it for you, maybe your vessel is unbalanced and it could be worthy to consider balancing the sailarea.
A trim-tap solution is so simple to build, you will build half a dozen before you have read this thread, more time to sail
If worried that you need more torque/power, scale up the tap-size and make it counterbalanced - consider also placing a bearing ball on the bottom of the axis reducing friction at lower cost than expensive hinges. Having crossed the atlantic (singlehanded) with a trim-tap solution, I am not worried as to the working of something made and mounted in less than 12 hours. On very fast boats, downwind with spinnaker/gennaker (I was sailing lightweight catamaran - 720kg) you get so close to wind speeds that there is not much for the wane to work with. Alas, sails are forward and you can easily set a storm jib on backstay (wishbone or tension/flatten with a boatmanshook) and run sheets via blocks directly to rudder.
I have used a variety of pendulum (Aries-style) windvanes also, in my experience, if you can balance your boat you can make most things work.

My boat is an S-2 7.9, which has an enormous mainsail and a relatively small foretriangle. I'm sure that in anything over about 12 knots I'll be using a reefed main. Up to 20 knots, though, I can steer the boat to windward and on a reach with two fingers on the tiller, as long as I reef the main early. I probably should have built in a bit more balance into the rudder, it's got about a 10% cutback now, and I could have made it 15%, pretty much for sure. But hey...it is what it is, now.

"Good" speed on the boat is 6-7 knots. If I'm going 8 -9 I'm flying along, and that will only happen in 15-20 knots of breeze. I can't imagine that the windvane will have less than 4-5 knots of wind to work with as long as the breeze is over 8-10 knots.. With a spinnaker up in 15 knots, odds are that I'll be on the tiller, and the electronic autopilot will be driving during hoists and douses. Downwind with a wung-out headsail, that will be the challenge, I think.

[Alan H]

I'm adding some structure to the bottom of the rudder, to the bracket that supports the weight of the trim tab. This is not doing the surface flow that exits the back of the rudder, any favors, but I'm paranoid about it breaking. I can just see coming off a wave, the entire weight of the trim tab is on the end of that extension, and *snap*. So there's been some judicious application of carbon fiber and a little sexy-curved bit of wood glassed in, which should help support things.

The last bit of fairing of the lower support on the self-steering trim tab support bracket went on last night and kicked off in the garage overnight. I wood-rasped and sanded it today. I just put one layer of 4-inch glass tape in epoxy over the whole thing. I have to say that while it's less than ideal from a hydrodynamic point of view, it's FF'ing STRONG. This will kick off outside, and it's going to take forever, 'cause it will be down into the 40's tonight. There's a light at the end of this building tunnel. With a little bit of luck, I'll be able to test it by New Years!

I just did a little bit of figuring. The Singlehanded TransPac is 2200 miles from San Francisco to Hanalei Bay, Hawaii. The SHTP is why I'm making this thing.

If I average 7 knots, for 2200 miles, it will take me 13 days and a few minutes. That would be wicked fast.

If I average 6 knots for 2200 miles it will take me 15.3 days. That's in the ballpark.

If I average 5 knotsfor 2200 miles it will take me 18.3 days. That would be slow

I've done this race once, and sailed the course one other time. One time it took me 16 days and about 5 hours, the other time it was just a tich more than 17 days, but I spent some time in the North Pacific High. If I could average 6 knots for the whole trip, that would be my fastest passage, yet, by almost a day. That seems like a worthy goal. Will a windvane steer a boat like mine for hours on end at 6 knots? I think SO!

[Alan H]

There's been a LOT of work filling, fairing and glassing the bottom bracket into place. It's been going slowly as the Mrs does NOT like epoxy in the garage, so everything is outside. It's been down in the high 30's, low 40's at night, and has rained a couple of times. The rudder has been covered with a poly tarp, so it hasn't gotten wet but still....takes a LONG time to kick off.



But it is now done. The bottom trim tab support is mostly 1" oak, with some strips of carbon tape in there. It's lag bolted and epoxied to the bottom of the rudder. The I faired the transitions with sawdust in epoxy, and sanded. And sanded some more. I then covered the bolt heads with a strip of oak that basically went the the entire chord of the bracket, epoxied on there and faired the transition with sawdust in epoxy again. More sanding. and more sanding. Finally, over it all went a layer of 4-inch glass tape..more sanding...and then a finish layer of epoxy. While this thing doesn't do the attached flow that exits the bottom of the rudder any favors, it's at least smooth and very strong.

[Alan H]

I am getting tantalizing close to "done" with the trim tab! The whole thing is MUCH less friction that the last system was...like stunningly so. I have a good feeling about this!




Some details... Here's the trimtab shaft bearing at the bottom. It's made out of two 1/4 inch pieces of starboard (the plastic product..)

[Alan H]

More detail shots... Here's the "middle" bearing. I was going to use the aluminum and sintered bronze pillow bearing I got from McMaster-Carr, but in fact the wood bracket is not quite level, not quite perpendicular to the trim tab shaft. The pillow bearings are self adjusting, but I've been leery about having three dissimilar metals so close to the waterline, so I just used a spare piece of UHMWPE that I had not used, earlier. The shaft is still very low friction.



Top detail, showing the nifty pillow bearing. Sitting on the rudder is a stainless steel shaft coupling. A Stainless tiller for the system is currently out of the picture, setting up with JB Weld - steel dust reinforced epoxy. I had some inspiration about how to make a tiller system from wood, and since I had the time and the scrap wood, I made what you see here. The set screws, which jam down on the s.s. trimtab shaft are just stainless machine screws that I put on the grinder wheel, and flattened the tips, somewhat. They look a little funky, but the system works! If this winds up being the #1` system, I'll probably hacksaw and grind them down so they don't stick out quite so much and look so dorky!



I just took this one to show the s.s. shaft collar, which prevents the whole system from bouncing up and the lower shaft "jumping" out of the lower bearing. $5.25 at the hardware store, totally worth it.

[Gary Mc]

Nice job Allan, looks good, hope it works well for you.
Boat looks familiar, I race an S2 9.1, very similar except for the keel of course.

Will watch for the next Transpac and follow you if entered.
Good luck

[Alan H]

Nice job Allan, looks good, hope it works well for you.
Boat looks familiar, I race an S2 9.1, very similar except for the keel of course.

Will watch for the next Transpac and follow you if entered.
Good luck

Thanks, Gary! Yeah, the 9.1 is the 7.9's Big Sister!

[Alan H]

Ready for in-the-water testing. Some of the stuff that's not actually in the water is a little bit crude, but it's strong and weathertight.

[Alan H]

It's Installed!



OK, some bits need some paint. If it all works the way it's supposed to, I'll pull the upper part back off and paint it.

YouTube video!

[Kapiteinterzee]

Hello Alan,
Wow, what a project. . . we've followed your posts, not just to see the build, but to see how you engineered your way through those annoying little nuisances that cropped up.

We're sure your windvane will work but worry that your railings may be compromised. Anyway, great job!

Stay safe stay healthy.

J.

[Alan H]

I sure hope it works! The stern rails are remarkably sturdy, and the lime green pole that the vane hangs off of is fiberglass. It's quite strong and light as well as corrosion-free. It IS ugly, however, and should everything work out, it will get a coat of white paint. I had a much longer section of the same stuff with a radar reflector and strobe light on it for my 445 mile qualifying sail, with no issues, so I hope this will be OK.

NWS forecasts winds <10 knots for the next few days so no point in trying it out. I'll be working on the asymmetrical spinnaker pole, instead.

[Alan H]

There was finally some wind today. Not a lot, but enough to test and the bad news is that the windvane is pretty much a fail. The good stuff...the trim tab controls the rudder with practically no effort at all on the trimtab tiller. I can steer the boat by gently tweaking the trimtab tiller with my fingertips, so the option is there to steer the boat with an autopilot moving the vane tiller. However, above about 3 knots, there's some significant shaking - vibration, probably from the trimtab operating in turbulent water off the back of the main rudder. I don't know if that vibration will get worse at higher speeds, I have to assume that it will. The vibration was noticeable at 2 knots, significant at 3 knots and destructive-over-the-long-term at 4 knots. Also, having the area of the trim tab so far back from the rotational axis of the rudder, well...it makes the rudder harder to turn by hand and it aggravates the issue of the tiller wanting to slam over instantly when I let go of it.

The killer is that the windvane itself will respond to wind direction when it's not tied into the trimtab. However, to get enough "slop" out of the system, I have to pull the lines fairly tight. That induces masses of friction inside the PTFE tubing, and the whole windvane system just locks up. The whole "wires inside PTFE tubing" is just a huge FAIL. I have no idea how Autohelm and the "girl in a gale" incredibly crude knockoff got it to work.

So now I have to decide if I want to re-engineer the whole thing, build an entirely new windvane and mast and hard-linked system to control the trimtab tiller....or figure that it's time to cut my losses. Even if I manage to make a hard-linked system in a couple weeks, there's still the vibration issue to consider.

It's hard to turn my back on so many months of work, so I'm doing nothing for a couple of days while I think it over. However, my gut is telling me that it's time to accept that this just isn't going to work, and get on with everything else that needs doing. I have two winches to rebuild/replace... hatch board slides to replace, a hatch to replace, AIS to install, and so on.

[Kapiteinterzee]

Hello Alan,
Sorry to hear about your windvane's performance. . .

When we first sailed with the Monitor type 11 windvane a weekend later after installation on Valkyrie (C&C 34) we too encountered serious vibration issues. These vibrations were due to the tubing we used to mount the stainless frame - it was too flimsy. We had purchased the unit "secondhand" but without the transom mount structure as the guy was going to use that for an outboard mounting so as to get rid of his Universal gasoline four-banger. [He said was going to become a "live aboard."]

Little did we know how fickle windvanes can be. After a few weekends of alignment, finagling and frustration, we contacted Kevin Fleming via phone and he set us straight. [This was before email and the internet.]

He advised going with the original larger diameter thicker walled tubing in lieu of our "cost cutting" effort to get by with thinner tubes. San Diego at the time had stainless steel shops cropping up "overnight" like mushrooms on a wet lawn given the hoopla of the America's Cup and Dennis Conner, et al. Those shops were fairly reasonable, cost-wise, so we made out until we had to redo the structure with thicker tubing that was not inexpensive.

The tubing/mounts were the issue. . . ruined our budget but we were working at the time so it wasn't but a few weeks of damnation.

Don't give up - "give it another go" - check your tubing diameters and mounts. . . hope this helps you.

Stay safe stay healthy.

J.

[Kapiteinterzee]

Hello again Alan,
We just remembered that trailing edges may cause vibration because they are too thick - a phenomenon called vortex shedding. Check the trailing edge of your water foil as it may be the culprit and can be remedied by sharpening it.

Damn, Alan. . . you got my danger up and thinking like a sailor again!

Stay safe, stay healthy.

J.

[Alan H]

Hello again Alan,
We just remembered that trailing edges may cause vibration because they are too thick - a phenomenon called vortex shedding. Check the trailing edge of your water foil as it may be the culprit and can be remedied by sharpening it.

Damn, Alan. . . you got my danger up and thinking like a sailor again!

Stay safe, stay healthy.

J.

The trailing edge of the main rudder is in fact rather too thick, at about 3/16ths of an inch. Without the trim tab there, I don't notice any vibration until the boat gets up to maybe 5 1/2 or 6 knots, and then it's a small-amplitude, high-"ish" frequency vibration. This is just shaking...hard.

I note that most of the trimtab systems I see online have the trim tab very close to the back of the rudder. I have placed mine 4 inches aft of the trailing edge, as I wanted to make sure that the tab had the power to control the rudder. Well...it does, by far. So I may pull the rudder off, lay it on my sawhorses and get out the saw. I might move the trimtab to a point right behind the main rudder trailing edge.

I see pictures of incredibly crude systems online that work. Mine is much more fair, and foil-shaped than some of the really crude things I see, so maybe that will solve it. If that, alone would make it work, I'd continue with the thing. however, I also have to make an entirely new upper-half. Do I have time for that? I think much will depend on whether my wife throws a fit at the almost $900 that a Pelagic autopilot costs.

[Alan H]

OK, today was spent moving the trim tab. That wasn't so bad, I cut off part of the bottom bracket, drilled new holes in the upper brackets and cut off the excess. I am behind schedule, I wanted this DONE by New Years, but maybe I can get Option 2 built by next weekend. Maybe. If I FOCUS.





We'll see if this takes care of the horrenduus shaking issue. This change also, obviously, moved the windvane tiller arm further forward, which is a good thing.

[Alan H]

The thing that kept me from ever putting together a hard-linkage system, and kept me so focused on the "wires-in-cable-housing' system was that I just could not figure out a way to put the illustrations of linkages I see online, into functional reality. Well, today a little miracle happened. You'll laugh, because it's SO NOT sophisticated, but this was a ~Huge~ AHA! moment for me. I was holding the little slapped-together wood trimtab tiller that I made out of wood, and I just wondered....out of the blue....if it would fit on some half-inch fiberglass rod that I got from my buddy Greg N.. I tried it. It fit.



This is a tich crude, the sheet metal screws are functioning as set screws, but the connection is actually pretty firm. I'll trim the fiberglass rod to length, and hang that assembly below the platform that will hold the vane mast. A piece of 1/4 inch fiberglass rod from TAP plastics, is, like eight bucks, and that will make a dandy connecting rod between the wind blade and this offset crank.

Hey now! I'm onto something, here!

[Gary Dierking]

I don't think I am exaggerating if I say this is the best self steering system ever. It took me and my trimaran 20,000 sea miles in the full range of sea and wind conditions. Did it steer at 22 knots surfing? Yes. Did it steer in three knots of wind in two huge swells coming from opposite directions? Yes. I never hand steered except entering harbor. Later I built the same one for a 26' monohull and the results were the same. The only difference was that the vane was a fabric wedge rather than the aluminum foil shaped one. I don't know how much the under hull skeg had to do with it but it did make the rudder impossible to stall.

[Alan H]

For sure, a Horizontal vane would have been easier to deal with, but I have solar panels on the pushpit, and a backstay that gets in the way! So vertical vane, it is!

[Alan H]

The new windvane direct mechanical linkage is done. It took me about a day and a half to make it essentially from wood scraps I had...an assortment of wood screws, some starboard I had lying around and epoxy. s.s. machine screws with the points ground off are functioning as set screws. There won't be a huge load on this, just the force of the wind on the vane, maybe 20 pounds....30 if it's honking.



If this works a treat, I might...MIGHT rebuild some of it in aluminum. I honestly think this is plenty strong enough, crude or not. It'll get paint on it in another day or two, when the epoxy stops being sticky.

[Neil C]

Nice work on the linkage.
Aim for the interface position with the trim tab tiller to be about 80% of the distance of the trim tab axis and the rudder axis, this should give feedback and smoother steering.

[Alan H]

Nice work on the linkage.
Aim for the interface position with the trim tab tiller to be about 80% of the distance of the trim tab axis and the rudder axis, this should give feedback and smoother steering.

Would you mind elaborating on that!

[Alan H]

Thanks to Neil C. pointing me at Faye Marine, I'm adjusting a little bit of the geometry of the linkage. It's no big deal, I'd have needed to do something like this anyway.

The last few sessions have just been making little fiddly bits of this and that. Here's some random windvane "stuff" setting up after an afternoon of improvisation. The green and yellow blade was repurposed from the failed "cables in housing" experiment. I'm sure I can use the counterweight from that vane, too. The black vane blade is actually riptstop nylon stretched between quarter inch fiberglass rod. It has rather a lot of "rake" to it, but it's extremely light, so it might be very sensitive.

A lot of what I'm putting together now owes it's inspiration to the late Walt Murray and his "DIY Windvane" website, such as using ABS pipe for the windvane mast. The Mister Vee site archived a lot of Walts Stuff.





Today saw me making this little crude masterpiece of ABS pipe, plywood epoxy and sawdust. It needs some "filling in" with epoxy which will happen when the ABS pipe "mast" goes in. This gets bolted to the platform, from which hangs the linkage.

[Alan H]

No pictures today. I'm finishing up little parts here and there and if all goes well, will mount the vane and test it tomorrow. We're supposed to have 5-15 knots of wind, gusts to 25 after weeks of <5 knots so tomorrow is the goal!

[Kapiteinterzee]

No pictures today. I'm finishing up little parts here and there and if all goes well, will mount the vane and test it tomorrow. We're supposed to have 5-15 knots of wind, gusts to 25 after weeks of <5 knots so tomorrow is the goal!

Hello Alan,

We hope all goes well for you today [and everyday] as planned. . . Godspeed!

Stay safe, stay healthy.

J.

[Alan H]

Sadly, no testing was done. I had to re-do the mast in 3-inch ABS, for a geometry reason which I didn't figure out until AFTER I built the new mast. sheesh. If I'd built the carrier a little bit differently, it would have worked fine. Oh well, I'll keep the old 2-inch mast and the small-ish cloth vane that I made and if I ever own a small boat that could use a windvane, I'll be two steps ahead.

So, here we are...vane completed, ABS tubing mast glued up and everything bolted to the platform. The inner tube is curing in the background, it's aluminum flashing, bent/curved and then epoxied into an exactly-sized tube. The ID of 3-inch ABS is a weird size.

[Alan H]

Setback...

On Saturday I bumped the vane while it was sitting just like in the picture above and the counterweight arm bonked me on the head. My head is totally fine, it was just a tap but the plywood of the carrier split off the surface layer, and the counterweight arm fell off. Seriously? REALLY???? My epoxy fillet and bond was fine, what failed was the manufacturers internal glue in the plywood. So that's reassembled, with epoxy and a couple of screws. Since I had to rebuild it, I just cut off the control arm that's on the vane base and epoxied/screwed one to the carrier. That should completely solve the "leaning" in and out issue that forced me to build a new "mast" from 3 inch ABS. This change will also alter the length of the control rod so I'll have to trim it a little bit. Between that and the fiddly bits I'm making to mount the platform to the boat, there went the weekend.

Better to have that happen in the garage than a day out into the Pacific....

[Alan H]

All right, the carrier is glued 'n screwed back together. I took the opportunity to make a couple of changes. Today before work I dashed down to my local metalshop and bought a 1-foot piece of stainless flat stock and had them punch 3 holes in it. That will bolt to the wood counterweight arm, add a little weight and be what I add the necessary counterweight to. If all of this actually works, I will likely re-make the carrier in aluminum, if I have time.

The other day I tried to make a tube out of aluminum flashing...haha! FAIL. You can see it in the picture below, with a hose clamp on it, and some white duct tape.. So when I was at the local metal shop I bought 18 inches of aluminum tubing that just fits inside the vane mast tube. It's a tich tight, but a little bit of sanding of the top part, on the inside, and some grease will take care of that. The bottom half of this tube is inserted into the main ABS mast tube, the top is what the 10-inches of ABS that has the carrier will rotate around. 8 inches of aluminum stick up, for the upper ABS and carrier to rotate around. The bottom 10 inches is epoxied inside the main ABS tube.

Vane-mast-aluminum-tube.jpg

I've made the angled bits that go on the top crossbar bar, that the whole assembly will be bolted to, and then U-bolted to the stern pushpit posts. That was an overnight epoxy job. It needs some sanding and painting, but seems strong. I've set up my outboard motor stand in the front yard and will assemble everything on that before I take it to the boat, to make sure everything fits.

[Alan H]

As is usually the case, if I were to start with a new vane, now, I could build one in 1/3rd the time, making use of what I have learned. If I added the skill of silver soldering / brazing aluminum to my arsenal, and added a proper drill press and a bench vise to my shop, I'm 95% sure I could make a commercial-grade trim-tab-on-auxiliary-rudder windvane.