How to deal with tiller handle wear?. . .

[Steven Gautney]

Bolt holes in the metal tiller handle are enlarged due to wear(I assume from the motion of the waves when fixed at dock). This makes the tiller too loose. I have tightened bolts but this is short term. I'm interested to know how others have fixed the problem. Do I need to simply replace the handle? Has anyone replaced the metal handle with a wooden one?

 

[Rick Webb]

Mine Too

I took mine to a machine shop they welded in a bushing so that it is a solid peice of metal where the bolt hole is. After all of that I used a longer bolt so that the threads were not chewing up the tiller. Put a wing nut on the end of it so that I can move the tiller to the other side of the rail and get it out of the way when at anchor or messing around in the cockpit. I am still thinking of getting a wooden tiller as that pipe gets damn cold while we sail in that frigid part of the year when it gets down to about 50 or so.

 

[Larry Mongeon]

Old Is Good

When I bought my H25 the tiller was completly delaminated 6 strips apart and the bracket holes worn to point where there was all sorts of play as you described. A friend helped me to re glue using west system epoxy and he used the same west system to fill in all holes where bracket was mounted. I then simply redrilled holes, sanded and varnished with a good marine quality uv resistant varnish. The tiller looks and functions as new. I did make a tiller cover and will never leave tiller uncovered when on the hard.