Stephen, I have built many rudders. I just finished a year building rudders for a living as a break from my normal gig. It was a nice sabbatical but quite demanding physically. If you want a nice rudder built for you contact Competition Composites, they build nice products.
For a transom hung rudder you cannot (should not) use just foam in the core. When we built transom hung rudders they were either mostly glassed wood cores or a composite foam core with a fairly substantial wood stringer laminated in the centre. When we had foam/wood composite cores there was usually lots of carbon uni involved as well. I have built a few Shark rudders as well as a Mirage 25 rudder. They were always solid wood cores. It sounds like yours is a wood core possibly (probably) with a glass skin. Coincidently I just rebuilt my Oday Mariner rudder. It is transome hung with a wood core/glass skin. For that rebuild I sanded off all the old skin, checked for/fixed any rot and then reskinned with 2 layers of 6 or 10oz cloth + epoxy. I can contact you off list if you want more specific details on the process but generally it is not difficult, just takes some time and care. Hope that helps
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