Play in Tiller

[ebb]

bill,
Fantastic photos. Looks like caramel - this time of year!

To me the Rosand pattern looks the same as the old one, NO?
Won't the old tiller fork work on the new tiller head?

The H.A. pattern looks absolutely humongous to me.
Do you think you can draw that split together with a smaller shaft hole.
Couldn't move it in a million years.

I don't understand why the Rosand won't work on the Ariel?
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However the old head in the photos shows some severe resculpting!!!
Imco that's the result of an BAD fitting bolt.
And as Ed points out a bad fit in the keyway.
I imagine the bolthole in the fork got out of round as well.

And as BILL mentions above, we have more on this subject elsewhere.
And the reason for the tiller bolthole wearing is due to steering with the tiller held high. The sides of the fork should engage the cheeks of the tiller head at all times.

One help for this is an radical "S" shaped tiller - one that misses people's knees because the handle is high at the end of the S shape when at the same time the tiller is almost in the down/resting position.
Admiral BILL has a perfect tiller of this type.

A more radical fix is to have the forks recast with "EAR" extensions. The forks would merely be wider at the bolt end (with appropriate shaping) so that when the tiller is raised - as when steering standing in the cockpit - the sides of the tiller still engage the cheeks of the tiller head because they extend lower. I would still have the pattern tiller BILL has in Maitai.

The wider/deeper tiller forks would help to keep the connecting bolt from getting wrenched and bent (tho that seems to me impossible - it also seems to happen). And keep the bolt holes in the tiller from elongating. This happens when the tiller at a high angle is steering the boat under load.

We could look at the bronze as being very forgiving. The tiller to rudder connection is high stress and high strain - better to have bending and wearing
than cracking and breaking. You probably can get back if its bent but not if its broke!