Shims for rudder shaft

[fishermantwo]

The rudder on my quarter tonner has a SS shaft of about 32 mm in a SS tube. There is a bit of slop and needs shimming. I saw thread some time back where a piece of mylar film was used as a shim. The gap is small, probably the same thickness as paper. Any ideas out there for some material that is readily available to do the job?

 

[eyehavit]

Paper is about 0.1mm thick so if the rudder shaft play is causing concern it must be more than that.
Can you borrow somebody's dial guage and measure the displacement between shaft and bearing? How about trying with feeler guages?
Once displacement distance is measured, shim thickness can be decided.

 

[davidbains]

Where are these shims sourced?

 

[fishermantwo]

[ QUOTE ]
Paper is about 0.1mm thick so if the rudder shaft play is causing concern it must be more than that/

[/ QUOTE ]

I dropped the rudder out a couple of days ago while the boat is in the water. There is a very thin plastic bearing in the lower section about 4 inches long. Top section has some old dried grease only. I tried a thin piece of copper as a tempoary shim but it would not fit. Rudder is back on now and I can not measure the difference with out a great deal of trouble. Will be on the slips shortly and will have another go there. From memory the gap was under 1 mm.
The idea for the mylar shim came from a diagram from the Catalina yachts company. They showed this method plus another where the bottom of the tube is blocked off with modelling clay and resin poured in the gap. The second method sounds tricky.