Straightening a twisted carbon skeg/rudder

My old surf ski had a twisted carbon skeg, so bad that it pushed me sideways when I was picking up speed (and I have trouble with balance in the ski anyway, which is frankly on the narrow side for me).

Looking at the skegs in our club's boathouse, many of them seem to have some amount of twist (although none as bad as mine), but I couldn't find anywhere online how to fix this - everything I found was about bent metal rudder bars.

So here what worked for me:

Clamp the rudder with glue clamps between 2 boards and add some rolled-up newspapers, which are about as thick as the deviation of your twisted rudder. Of course, place the newspapers so that they push the curves back in the right direction. In my case, letting the whole thing sit for 24 hrs. was enough.

The rudder is now almost perfectly straight again! So now I can start working on the rest of my stability issues

Hope this can be of help to others sometimes. And happy to receive any feedback.

Mostly translated with DeepL.com (free version) - I hope I am using the correct lingo.

I have never seen a twisted carbon rudder. Did the carbon rudder spin on the metal shaft? Or was the actual carbon itself bent?

The carbon itself.

Judging by what I saw on other (mostly older and longer) ski rudders in the boathouse, this did not seem to be a unique problem, but the amount of twist in mine was the worst.

I may have to repeat the repair as I noticed yesterday that after a couple of days the rudder got back some of it old twist in the days after its 'release' - not to a noticeable level while paddling but you can imagine that I want to get it as straight as possible now.
Next time I will leave the clamps on a couple of days - and I will also try to take some photos.

Is it a thin rudder? I feel like most newer rudders are fairly thick with a foam core that should make them resistant to twisting because it is a 3 dimensional object not a mostly 2 dimensional one.

Here is a photo from today.
(looks like the rudder has been listening to Chubby Checker again - time to break out the clamps once more and leave them on longer this time)

Abandon ship me hearties. Go Donald Kiesling rudders at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

PS I have no financial interest or otherwise in DK rudders - well apart from the half dozen of his rudders for a range of boats in my shed