In a previous post I added an iroko bush to the rudder. I also wanted to reinforce the leading edge and bottom of the blade. My blade was showing scuff marks where it had hit things.

I initially tried putting fibreglass tape and epoxy onto the leading edge:

The problem was that it looked horrible – probably due to my inexperience with fibreglass tape. The rudder is very visible and I want it to look nice.

I sanded the epoxy and fibreglass off the sides of the rudder. I was going to sand off the edge too, but left that until last, so I ended up with a thin bead of epoxy and fibreglass along the leading and bottom edges. This looks fine so I’m leaving that in place and varnishing over the top.

This is a very labour-intensive way of getting to the end result, but overall I’m happy with it. It remains to be seen how robust it is – but hopefully it will be more robust than the previous thin wooden edge.