Jim's blog

Last week I bought a couple of lengths of timber, kauri and mahogany, to laminate up for a new tiller.

The small scale plans that are in LHF's book "Sensible Cruising Designs" specify the tiller butt end dimensions at 2" x 2". The broken tiller is slightly larger than that.

I spent a couple of evenings this week slicing my timber into strips and planing them down to 6mm thick - the first significant use I have made of my De Walt planer that has been sitting under the bench for a year or so. I have also laid out the shape I will form the laminations to to get a nice (I hope) curve on the new tiller. The old tiller used to be slightly too close to the top of the cockpit aft coaming so I have curved it up a bit more than the old one. Hopefully the curve will not spring back too much when I release the clamps.



Saturday - I glued up the first 5 laminations today. First I costed the side that were going to be glued with un-thickened epoxy, and then I spread on a thick mix and clamped it up. I under-estimated the quantity I would need by quite a bit and ended up making 3 batches - very quickly I might add. I managed to get the ratio on the 2nd batch wrong and put in about 20% too little hardener. Hopefully it will still be strong enough to hold it all together.



Most of my clamps are cheap bar clamps, but today I bought a better quality Urwin one with a pistol type grip. It did a much better job of pulling in the tight part of the bends than the cheap bar clamps did when I did a test assembly. I'll get more over time I think although with epoxy I don't want to overtighten the clamps as the joint depends on the epoxy in between the wood.







And thanks to my helper - good job Sam.



I tapered the tiller with a combination of a jigsaw and belt sander, rounded the edges with a router and have spent quite some time carefully filing and sanding to get a good shape and finish.









I drilled the hole for the retaining bolt oversized, filled it with a stiff epoxy mix and then drilled it out the right size. That should stop water getting into the inside of the bolt hole. The holes in the rudder cheeks are a little harder to deal with tough.

And the finish is paint on the butt end where it will be inside the tiller and 8 coats of varnish on the remainder. I am pleased with the outcome.

Christmas has been and gone and I am now back in the office.

We had a great time away, mostly excellent weather, and spent a lot of timing sitting and reading, or walking on beaches.

Yesterday I worked a short day and in the afternoon picked up a couple of lengths of timber, mahogany and kauri, to laminate up for a new tiller for Dovekie - a high priority now to get the wood sliced and a template made up something like this