Great pics!
Ditto on the bracket(s) behind the tiller head......? quadrant steering to come?
I find the extreme fender washers on the tiller bolt most fascinatin!
Can still hear Bill telling me to lower the tiller or I'll strain the tiller head.
Wonder if there is enough added from the 'washers' to support the tiller (in terms of strain on the tiller bolt.)?
Once threatened to weld some ears on the old tiller head so that you wouldn't strain something with the tiller up while sitting on the coaming. You'd have continuous wide area of surface bearing on the head no matter what angle the tiller. Jowls might be a more appropriate body part name - they would be short extensions added to hinge underneath just forward of the bolt. But, be messing with the temper. Wouldn't weld to an old bronze casting. Nope.
The big washers give support to the tiller hinge in any postion:
Straight Up Vertical, like some tie their tillers when they leave the boat.
Good idea! Simple.
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A 5/16" tillerhead bolt isn't a hell of a lot of insurance. Mine came with a bolt with threads running to the head. Got a longer american threaded bolt that has an unthreaded 'shoulder'. (Jamestown Dist) So that just the nut has threads, NOT any part going thru the knuckles. All moving parts now bear on smooth metal.
Too bad they didn't leave enough meat for a rebore in a 3/8"s bolt. That would be perfect.
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About this tillerhead we have.
{The moving part of the tillerhead is a channel. Very simple casting. A wood model could be made that was
slightly lighter in section,
had rounded corners,
was a bit deeper (Little Gull's is 1 1/8" - could be redesigned to 1 1/2") to hold the wood tiller better and allow a better spread of the bolts.
Also more metal could be left around the hinge bolt hole so that a larger bolt could be used to hinge the tiller.
Even simpler: you could keep the same channel width that the tiller is bolted to on the head so you could have a wider tiller end for strength. My fitting gets narrower in way of the tiller wood for some dumb reason.
It is 1 3/16" wide where the tiller goes. At the hinge-bolt it's 1 11/16" wide. Not a hell of a lot more. This tillerhead was designed for a metal tiller! Tell me I'm wrong. We should make a wider one.
And take the pattern to a foundry, have em make us some.
Don't suppose anybody is interested in this esoterica. Right?
I'll do a model of this part of the tillerhead that attaches to the tiller - to approval - if anyone is interested in replacing....}
Could be fabricated of welded s.bronze also.
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