The tiller. Surely this is the work of the devil.
Now that I've got that out of the way, if you have to have a modified tiller, build one. They are surprisingly simple to make, as on a 22 they only, (and conveniently), were built to be two inches wide. So, just buy one inch wide hardwood of your choice, (I used oak), and glue the two pieces together with Gorilla Glue or Titebond, and there you go. With either of these two adhesives, you can not beat it apart with an ax. Which is what I consider every time I look at it, but regardless; then whiz out the shape you want with a common jigsaw.
So in answer to the outcry I may hear about it, "But Chris, you can't use hardwoods on a boat". Yeah right. You think all those wooden ships that mankind has been building for ten thousand years was made out of teak? Oak hulls, and pine masts. And, I've got a secret formula that only two people in the world know about. Myself, and a Chinaman that taught it to me, and I've been meaning to kill him to keep the secret safe. We call it varnish.
Little has changed about this stuff since the time of the Egyptians, and further refinements typically only "ruin" it. With more than ten, and less than fifteen coats of Schooner varnish, cardboard will withstand the elements. I get more comments out of my Home Depot tiller from the dock walkers than anything on the boat.
Maybe because I'm utterly insane, (as I'm relatively sure most people on here have ascertained), but I see little use in spending money I don't have to. It's a tiller. Not a family heirloom, or a coffee table conversation piece. Why beat up and bang mahogany. For the price of some of these pieces of wood, I can replace it every year for ten years. And if you are going to sail in the path of Joshua Slocum and pass the boat on to the grandkids, by all means spend a lot of money on something exotic. But in the reality check, is that what's really going to happen?
I have a boat built from white oak frames with a plywood skin. I have another boat with steam-bent plywood over old growth Douglas Fir. I know of a racing boat that has a masonite skin over a plywood frame. The deck of my little 50's outboard runabout has a deck that was crafted basically from plywood used for interior door skins... A wooden cruiser I had a chance to check out several yars ago was named Knot-Free, (or something similar that expressed a double-entendre) as it was build from boards of clear pine purchased at the local lumber store.
Chris Craft boats were not built of mahogany, (native to Africa) but rather a wood with more of a red tinge sourced from the Phillipines. The marketing department dubbed it Phillipine Mahogany to get around the perception that Chris Craft boats were being built from an inferior wood. My point here is that wood snobbery has been around for a long time. :stirthepot: As Chris says, it is not the material, but how it is preserved and maintained! That masonite boat still floats....
Back to topic. If a custom tiller will address an issue or perceived need for an individual cockpit, there is no reason not to go for it. A buddy of mine had a tiller that was split and delaminating. He also wanted it shorter. I took it and did a little rework. First I re-glued the thing back together. Without knowing the previous adhesive, I used some thickened West Systems as the adhesive. After it was a solid piece again, I trimmed it to the length he wanted.
Fully knowing that tillers often split because of the loading applied by the mounting bolts, I took the shortened tiller and cut away two wide rabbets, one on each side, and then added cheek blocks to both sides of the tiller, These two new pieces are glued on, (with Franklin Titebond II since it is flexible like wood when cured) perpendicular to the existing laminations, bridging them and spreading the load. Finally, just to be ridiculously anal, (I had time when I did this one) I cross-drilled the tiller assembly where the bolts would go through, drilling it substantially over-sized. Using a homemade die, I pulled custom dowell material to fill the over-sized holes and glued them in, (again Titebond II here). I then cross-drilled for the bolts, and sealed the drilled holes with thinned epoxy.
Now granted I spent more time in an effort to over-build the aft end of a broken stock tiller rather than creating anything truly custom, but again, as Chris shared, most of it is doable and well within the grasp of anyone who can run a jigsaw and a drill well.
There was that other custom tiller I made a few years back, but we won't go there...
Integral internal tiller lock, horizontal steam bent curved laminations of oak and poplar.... Nah, nevermind.
Anyway, here are some pics of the restored tiller as it was being rebuilt.
