Play in Tiller

[ebb]

Hey there Tim.
I guess all my verbiage is to hopefully get some interest going about redoing the fitting. It's a pretty conservative lot we got going around here! Must be something metal and alloys and fire and brimstone. And it probably would be better if an actual Westlawn grad would draw the better one.

The imposing part in this is that we have deferred to the designer and engineer on the tiller/rudderhead fitting. I think that some bad compromises were made designing the one we have. And we're brainwashed into accepting it. I'll bet that Alberg had nothing to do with it. I believe that well enginnered fittings look right, have some beauty about them. That thing we got in the cockpit is heavy and clunky and ugly. This is not to say that it doesn't have some good things. The rudderhead part is pretty sophisticated - it's the tillerhead part that never was finished by Pearson.


Awhile back I got a chromed bronze Edson tiller/rudder fitting for a backup. It's a lot prettier and sexy to look at than ours - which looks like it was recycled off Capt Nemo's Nautilus. Trouble is the keyway is in the front rather than the back.
My attempts at making a new rudder now has two keyways on the top of the shaft 180 degrees apart. Actually that may be a good thing since keyways get screwed up a lot.


There may be an impediment going off to the foundry with your own design, but, hell, if you had one chock or cleat of a certain pattern and you had to have two, it isn't a big deal to take it to a foundry and ask them to cast another. Or, as I saw for ten years of weekends being around a great yacht being built, you make up wood models from the yacht designer's specs - or scale up a fitting you like - or fix a design that's OK but missed it. It's a mystery, but it ain't no big mystery.

Getting the tillerhead recast is something you'd go to the foundry and talk about. No different than going to a machine shop, or a highly skilled welder. And find out if something can or can''t be done. Just costs time and money.