Drawings for home made servo pendulum?

[jerrytug]

Hello folks a quick question,thanks in advance if anybody can give me a steer..
I live on my Hurley 24' , disp 2 tons, tiller steering. I want to make my own wind vane steering,as my autohelms keep breaking and use too much power.
I can weld nicely etc,but I can't afford to buy self steering. Are there any plans out there which don't use aluminium castings etc which I could copy? Many thanks Jerry.
edited to add,looking at Paul Fay just now.

 

[DinghyMan]

Have you seen;

http://www.jesterinfo.org/haslerselfsteering.html & http://www.kyoa.org.uk/haslervanegears.htm

http://www.diy-wood-boat.com/Wind_vane.html

If you need any lathe or mill work at reasonable rates just give me a shout

 

[hrchivers]

The Mister V site hosts Walt Murray's web pages, which include quite a lot of information and drawings:

http://www.mistervee.com/?q=content/walt-murrays-website

There are other web resources on vanes but I don't have immediate links, would probably repay searching.

Good luck
Howard

 

[Felixcat]

"Yacht Wind Vane Steering" by Bill Belcher has several designs in wood and explanation of theory, but I see Amazon offers it for £144.50 or £238.34!

 

[co256]

http://www.faymarine.com/plansite/fay_marine_yacht_pl.htm

 

[jerrytug]

Thanks for posting those links,plenty to get my teeth into! Fair winds Jerry

 

[rob2]

Assuming you can machine up the parts and weld stainless, it the design deatail of the monor parts that are difficult to achieve. You can use a horizontal pivot vane or an upside down version transmitting the output through a pushrod and converting it back to a rotational force acting upon the pendulum blade via a 2:1 ratio pair of bevel gears. These are readily available on-line in either acetal or stainless and can be simply bolted into place. There is some experomenting to do to get the sizes of the airvane and pendulum blade right. More difficult to get right is the turret for adjusting your course rotating such that the push rod remains centred over the link to the gear. Likewise it is advisable to devise a method of kick-up protection for the pendulum blade and a way of easily unshipping it when not in use. I really liked the way the Navik blade lifted out through the frame to unship it - but it was unique in having driving a trim tab on the pendulum blade.

The guy who makes the Seafeather unit tried using similar linkages to those in Walt Murray designs but found them less responsive than a bevel gear, despite being made to precision engineering fit.

Rob.