How to Repair a Broken Kayak Rudder Bracket and Stern

Simple steps and required material to fix a broken rudder bracket that was pulled off the stern of a plastic (polyethylene) kayak.

Also, I'm showing a new "waterfoiled" shaped rudder blade installed after the original one, made out of aluminum, bent and broke while paddling. The new rudder blade is shorter in length, is stiffer and performs much better (less drag) due to its waterfoiled shape. I have modeled the rudder via FEA (Finite Element Analysis) and performed CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations to explore how to improve the rudder shape, beyond the state of the art designs.

How to build this homemade rudder system?. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1PAsJrxncs

Rudder templates can be ordered for just US$ 5 at http://www.wix.com/mobykraft/website#!kayaks-&-canoes and the templates will be send via email.

http://www.mobykraft.com

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• kayak
• rudder
• stern
• repair
• fiberglass
• fibra
• vidrio
• polyester
• resin
• epoxy
• poliester
• polyethylene
• polietileno
• plastico
• plastic
• aluminum
• aluminio
• timon
• reparacion
• popa
• sanjuanx
• mobykraft

[mariotxus]

You are a genius Sir! Thanks for sharing this with us.

[sanjuanx]

@mariotxus Thank you very much!

[Madodel]

Did you sand the surface of the polyethylene? How it the strength of adhesion to the surface of the polyethylene?

[sanjuanx]

@Madodel The fiberglass plug -shaped as a cone- did adhere well to the interior of the stern. The epoxy coat provided the extra sealing. No leaks so far.

[arboledax]

Is it okay to use epoxy resin instead of poliester to repair my polyetlylene kayak stern?

[sanjuanx]

@arboledax Yes, you can use epoxy resin.

[NinjaMushroomz]

I followed your instructions to repair the stern of my perception kayak. I hit my rudder with a rock backing off in Lake Michigan and the whole stern bracket was pulled off as you show in your video. The stern is now reinforced with the fiberglass plug. Thank you so much!