Tiller

Still slowing moving ahead. Work and going out of town don't help, but I will get there!

After the boom gallows, I used some of the same wood I cut for the tiller.
I glued up things using a new jig I made.  Since it was very cold in the garage, I had to use the work lights to help the epoxy cure. I left them on for about 24 plus hours and then clamped up for about a week before removing from the gig.

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After removing from the jig, you can see all the epoxy I had to clean up. I definitely made sure I had enough epoxy and coated both sides of each piece. In the picture below you can see the electric hand planer I used to clean things up and get a flat surface.

After I cleaned things up I had a nice piece of stock to cut out the tiller using the pattern. Since the wood I used was for the boom gallows, it was 2 inches wide. I figured I could cut down the middle and make 2 tillers. One to be used as a spare.

Cutting the the tiller on a vertical cut on the bandsaw was somewhat challenging, but I made it through. I really need to get a replace bandsaw blade. It seemed very dull.

So after cutting them out, I used a hand plane to clean things up. I then took my router with a 1/4 bit and did all the edges. Also did a little rough sanding.  Below are the pictures.

The thickness of the tiller is supposed to be 3/4 inches. Mine is a little under 1" in thickness. It seems comfortable in my hand, but I need to narrow the end down where it fits into the rudder. I will work on that this weekend. I think the final product will look nice and I have a spare!!

I have had a hard time and I think I have stated it before that I have trouble using hand planes. Well I finally bought a Work Sharp 3000 to sharpen them. It is like night and day how good they work now.
I have tried to sharpen by hand, but never did a good job. Thy work great now that they are actually sharp!!!

Below is where I was working on the scarf joints on the pieces for the mast. I will be working on that this weekend as well as some other projects.