This is a very robust set of stainless steel
rudder hardware. The part that bolts against the transom
is a full 1/8th (0.125) of an inch thick and 1.25" wide. The rudder gudgeons are made from 1" wide strap and are 3/32 (0.090)" thick. The pin is 3/8"
in diameter. The nominal rudder width is 1-3/4" but these rudder gudgeons can be adjusted to fit anything from 1-1/2" to 2".
You are buying two of the pintle sets as pictured
above. They will mount one rudder as shown on Dave Richards'
Weekender as shown below:
In fact it was Dave whose inquiry moved us
to make this set up in the first place. Dave wrote:
Hi Chuck and Sandra,
I hope you had a great Christmas and have a happy
New Year.
Last summer some time I had an e-mail conversation
with a fellow in Colorado who was building a Weekender.
He said he had contacted you about pintles and gudgeons
that would work on the Weekender. Due to a job change
or something, he’s given up on the Weekender but
I’m building a new rudder box and was thinking that
this coming spring would be a good time to get rid of
the eye bolts and try something a bit cleaner looking.
Have you got anything that might work?
The problem with the Weekender’s stern is
that tapered stern post. It comes up to a point and there’s
not much stock near the top for screws into the sides
of the post. The other problem for a stock-built Weekender
is that the stub tiller extends through the transom so
you can’t just lift the rudder box pintles off the
gudgeons.
I think the best thing would be to have gudgeons
on both the boat and the rudder box with a pin that slips
in and locks somehow.
Have you got any ideas?
Thanks for everything.
Dave
It occured to us that we might use our RL-490
Pintles as rudder gudgeons with a specially made vertical
gudgeon for the transom. I suggested this to Dave and he
sent us this rendering:
We then sent this to the nice folks at Race-Lite
and they agreed to make up the special vertical gudgeon.
We had ordered RL-490 pintles without pins in them a few
months earlier. This all takes time but soon the new vertical
gudgeons arrived. Imagine our embarassment when the new
parts did not match the old ones. They fit Ok, but they
only allowed 20 degrees or so of movement to each side -
not enough!
So we called Race-Lite and they were able
to quickly see the problem and suggest a solution. That
was the new rudder gudgeon you see in the picture at the
top of the page. Soon the new parts were made and we sent
a set off to Dave. He was able to put them on his boat and
the results seem to be great. Thank you Dave for your contribution
to Weekender builders everywhere.
NOTE: The vertical gudgeons
in this set will also work very nicely with our RL-390
series pintles.
Feedback:
Finding a lower gudgeon for my Melonseed Skiff caused a problem for me. I tapered my skeg as the plans show, leading to difficulty using a gudgeon with 'legs' that fit on either side of the skeg, as the two sides of the tapered skeg are not parallel in the vertical direction. I found a solution -- a vertical gudgeon that attaches to the aft face of the skeg. You guys sell these for the Weekender. I bought one such horizontal gudgeon to use for the lower position and for the upper gudgeon and the two pintles (for a 1" rudder) I bought one of each of the RL-390's.
One very minor issue is that the amount to which the pintle leg holes in the gudgeons are offset from the wood they attach to differs slightly for the two gudgeons. The Weekender gudgeon is a bit 'beefier' and the hole in these is about 3/16" further away from the bottom of the gudgeon base than is the case for the 390 gudgeon. I plan to deal with this by mounting the upper pintle a 3/16" further away from the foward face of the rudder than the lower pintle is mounted to allow the two pintle pins to line up.
Steve
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