Making Boat from Plans: tiller

December 26, 2014

The weather was up in the 50s today. Therefore, I took the opportunity to do a little work on the boat by installing the gudgeons and locating the pintles. After several measurements with the help of my daughter (this is a two man job), we decided the lower pintle and gudgeon were on center, and just high enough for the rudder cheeks to clear the water while under way, while giving maximum blade depth. An hour or so later, sealed the holes, bolts, and nuts with 5400. The tiller clears the deck with room to spare, but is not too high. It also looks as if the chosen length is just right and with a tiller extension will be a pleasure to operate. We hope we got it right.

Tiller clears the deck.

Vertical alignment looks ok.

Just a nice shot.

Length of the tiller looks good. I like a slightly larger handle for long rides. Most steering will be done from the tiller extension. I will also add an uphaul in addition to the down haul. It is not on the plans, so will need to be creative.

June 2, 2015
Final coats of polyurethane are being applied to the deck. This WR-LPU goes on best on cold, damp days, thinned a little with water, and applied with a roller and tipped with a foam brush, out of the wind, on a cold day 48F. The clean up with water and low VOC is worth the effort.

few brush strokes, and high gloss.

June 7, 2015
I made the tiller extension, and attached the rudder hardware today. I am having thoughts about adding an uphaul to the rudder. The downhaul cleat was added and I just need to add a few feet of small spectra braid. The tiller extension is the part that connects the skipper with the boat, and I put a little extra effort into this part. It is about 2.5 long mahogany stick with a small square of mahogany attached to the end. I had one of these on my Enterprise many moons ago and it was comfortable for many miles.

Fiberglass mast track ramps were made as well, and hatches installed and bungee attached.

The garage and boat got a good cleaning today while the weather was nice.

June 9, 2015 Rub Rails
Fabricated the rub rails and drilled for location on the boat. They need a coat of varnish and rain is in the forecast, so they are back in the garage. I may omit the bungs I usually put in so that I have the ability to easily take the parts off and replace or re-varnish off the boat. Well see...