Tiller

[Clyde_Wanderer]

Hi all.
Seen as I cant get started on the strenghtening of my hull at keel area due to the fact that I had keyhole surgery on both my knees a wk ago and cant kneel, I am trying to do some of the other smaller jobs needing done.
I removed the tiller this afternoon with intentions of making a new one.
The present one seems to be made of one solid peice of oak, aprox 3" square and 3ft long and rounded off at the hugging end.
Anyone give me ideas how to make a good looking laminated one, with an upward curve near the rear end and leveling off towards the front.
IT does need to be massively strong, as when she takes weather helm it means wedging oneself against the sides and using two hands, and a lot of effort to hold her on, infact on a few occasions I thought it was going to snap, BTW it is not rotten.
What types of wood? and what glues? cold clamping to a pre-made mould? or steaming?
Thanks

 

[Roach1948]

I am currently carving a new one for my tichy yacht around 2"sq and 1.2 metres long. I am making it in Ash for its well known shock-load absorbancy. With your dimensions I think you will get away with a solid carving, unless ofcourse your current tiller is not Oak but Ash and has snapped in which case laminate!

 

[l'escargot]

and a pdf with suggestions here

 

[davierobb]

I made a new tiller for my snapdragon last year, like yourself it had to be strong as the weather helm can be massive when you don’t reef down quick enough. I used the wood I could find, American maple (white) from Alexander’s sawmills Prestwick and mahogany from work.

Step1 rip the wood into strips thin enough to take a bend 3 mm ish. The saw I used did not leave a totally smooth Finnish but it seam to have worked ok. Gives the glue something to stick to.
Make the strips at least 5mm wider and 25 mm longer than required to allow a certain amount of misalignment in the mould and to sand down.

Step2 Make a mould, I cut the mold out of a thick piece of kitchen worktop, the worktop needs to be thicker than the width of the tiller. Use one or two pieces to get required thickness. basically lay the old tiller on worktop with at least 250mm above and below plus 50mm extra at ends. Mark the outline of tiller on worktop. project tiller outline to ends of worktop. Cut worktop into two pieces (along tiller outline) with jigsaw, don’t worry about being 100% accurate. Screw some 50 x 25 mm strips either side of mold so that they act as a guide for the two half’s and cause them to easily align. Now you have a mold.

Step3 create a clamp for the mold I used pairs of screwed rods with connecting brackets top and bottom. You need one of these every 200mm ish. I still have these if you want to borrow them.

Step4 take top half of mold off and lay strips of wood in mold with plenty of glue between them. I covered both inside surfaces of mold with plastic to allow release of tiller when glue has set. I used bog standard evo stick or resin W wood glue, blue bottle is waterproof and seems to be ok so far.

Step5 fit clamps and tighten, I found that clamping it solid at one end then progrevivly tigntening the rest of the clamps worked ok.

Step6 leave tiller in mold for at least 5 days.

Step7 open mold and remove tiller.

Step8 shave/fair/ new tiller to desired profile, this took only 1 hour and the finish seamed to pass the scrutiny on some of the old salts at TCC. I used a cheap spoke shave from screwfix.

Step9 sand, varnish, stand back and admire.

I managed make the new tiller over a period of about a week, I reckon it took about eight hours work in total.

 

[pampas]

Tip when laminating. is to taper the strips( thickness elevation) to the finished thickness of the completed tiller, this ensures the lamination strip is nearly full diamension when shaped in the vertical plane, looks nicer as well.

 

[William_H]

If your boat often has a lot of weather helm it is no wonder your knees have given out. And you will have trouble in future.
Weather helm is usually due to the hull being overdriven so a smaller jib and or reef is called for. however.....

You can ease the rudder loads a lot by if possible adding more balance to the rudder. this is more surface area forward of the pivot point (rudder shaft) This can be done by adding a strip of foam to the leading edge giving 1 or 2 inches extension. This is then fibreglassed over to make a smooth leading edge now extended. The area forward of the pivot cancells out the pressure of a similar area aft. So up to 25% increase in area ahead will reduce the rudder loads by 50%. However be wary that the total sideways load on the rudder remains high it just doesn't reflect to the tiller. So rudder still may sanp offf.
If the rudder is hung close to the keel then an extension of the rudder below the keel with a large area forward of the pivot will do the same job. Do not make the extension excessively strong as you might need to have the extension break off if you hit rocks or similar, rather than damaging the whole rudder system. If it does break off you are no worse off than at present just a bit of drage from damaged edges. Try it ,it makes sailing more pleasurable especially when the boat is driven hard. olewill

 

[Guest]

Say's it all really dunnit! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[CliveG]

Just for inspiration here is one I made earlier.

I used Balcontan to glue it up.
This was recommended by another Forumite.
It is a good gap filling glue and sets to a light brown in colour.
I have no links with the supplier just a satisfied user.

 

[PuffTheMagicDragon]

[ QUOTE ]

Weather helm is usually due to the hull being overdriven so a smaller jib and or reef is called for.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lost me there Olewill!

How would "a smaller jib " reduce weather helm?

 

[stevebrassett]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Weather helm is usually due to the hull being overdriven so a smaller jib and or reef is called for.

[/ QUOTE ]
Lost me there Olewill!

How would "a smaller jib " reduce weather helm?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ironically, it can, by reducing heel, and therefore reducing hull-shape induced weather helm. When wind pipes up my Leisure gains weather helm, and the first thing to do is to put a few rolls in the genoa.

Obviously it depends on the boat.