Refurbishing the Tillers

In addition to the rudder redo, I refurbished and lightened the tillers and tiller bar. The tillers on the Tiki 21 are HEAVY as designed. If you take a look at the tillers on a Tiki 26 or 30, it looks like the same scantlings are used for all three, which is overkill for the little Tiki 21 IMHO.

The weight of the tillers has always bothered me, particularly as they hang off the tops of the rudders, and the rudder hinge points are carrying the weight of the cantilevered tiller arms.

I weighed my tillers and they were around 5.5 lbs each. They needed to be stripped and repainted, so I decided to also judiciously attack them with power tools to take off some of the non-essential bulk.

After paint stripping a sanding

After stripping them of hardware and the reinforcing bindings, I rounded off all of the edges, and cut off anything that wasn't doing much - like several inches of extension at the stern end of the rudders (see top picture). This was a lot of man-hours of work.

Had to work really hard to get all of the old paint and epoxy out of the webs. Also to sand between new coats. This was my method.

I also stripped off the old Brightsides paint using paint strippers, and sanded down to clean wood (this was also many hours of work).

First, three coats of West 207 epoxy (for clear coating)

Against my better judgment, I decided that they would look nice varnished - a ridiculous amount of work commitment, including having to re-coat them every year henceforth. l looked up the Gougeon Brother's Bible and followed their advice that three coats of 207 epoxy, followed by three coats of varnish was the go for a clear varnished finish.

With three coats of 207, and three coats of Epifanes varnish - nice!

That is six coats, allowing each coat to harden, then sanding before the next coat goes on. That is six days - even if you lived in a magic world where you don't have to go to work! In reality, it represents a couple of weeks. Still, they look really nice after the three coats of Epifanes traditional gloss varnish. I used foam brushes for the first time to tip the varnish on, and they worked really well.

Autopilot line attachment point

I included a few custom tweaks during the refurbish. The picture above shows a saddle to attach the auto pilot steering lines to (instead of just tying them around the tiller). The screws for the saddle go right through into a G10 web that was glued into the space behind. I did this so that the loads from the steering lines would be spread to both sides of the tiller arms. It is totally overkill because the loads are low, but I will never have to worry about them coming out.

Tiller bar reinforced holes for articulating with the tillers

Any articulating holes were drilled oversize and filled with hardened epoxy. they were then re-drilled to form a bearing surface and to prevent water from penetrating the surface of the tiller and crossbar.

Rather than wind on all of the binding reinforcements as in the plans, I made an epoxy-sealed hole at the stern-end of the tillers and fitted a through-bolt. In the highly unlikely case of a glue join failure in a tiller, the through bolt will stop the tiller from "unzipping" in half. Thus, I can do without all of the bindings, and it will be much easier to maintain the tillers in the future.

The above picture shows a reinforced hole through the front end of the tillers to accommodate some bungy cord. I use this cord in a loop around the tiller bar to stop it coming apart in a sea way.

Steering gear back on the boat. Still haven't properly reattached the steering lines to their new fittings.

So, after a great deal of work, the steering gear is back on the boat and looks really nice. I am surprised by how a bit of varnish work makes the boat look more attractive. By the time I was finished, the weight of each tiller had been reduced by around 40% (from 5.5 lbs, down to 3.5lbs). The effect seems much more as the tillers "feel" much lighter and don't seem to weigh on the rudders so much. I am really pleased with how this project turned out.