This is me being fussy – I know – but I don’t really like wood bearing on steel bolts. Thus I wanted to put a bush into the rudder plate to act as a bearing. I was going to use acetal/Delrin but this is tricky to bond to the rudder blade, so I used iroko instead. While this is still wood it is very tough and pretty much waterproof. It can also be epoxied to the rudder blade.

Setting up the rudder blade for drilling

Making the iroko bush

In place – not yet glued