Tanzer Tiller

Tanzer Tiller--Monday, September 30, 2013--I should have gone to work.  I have a few pending jobs for my home repair business; the weather sucked, but the jobs are indoors. I could have done them.  I just wanted to work on the boat.  I am kind of getting into this retired thing! 

Today the rough shape of the tiller was cut out of the glue up with the band saw.  Then I couldn't help it.  I just kept going.  The hardest part of this job is fairing in the long gentle curves of the 44-inch stick of wood. It could be a straight stick like the C-Lark, but I wanted to stay with  Tanzer's elegant deisgn.

I found out that a 1/16" slat of poplar wrapped in 60 grit sandpaper made a great flexible sanding block.  It conformed to the curves and evened out the tooling from the band saw,spindle sander, planes, and belt sander.  I spent about an hour making sure that the tiller fit the rudder head connection exactly--no slop.




It took a lot of tools to get the rough shape down to the line.

The poplar sanding block worked well for the final fairing.  I finished up the bottom side, then

spiled off the top side and sanded down  close to the line.  After that, I planed, then sanded some more. 

The final shape was created with a router round over bit and a lot of sanding with 60, 120, 150,

220 grits.



The final shape was a little thicker than the original and a little less elegant,  but I like to add

a little for "stout." The original tiller will be the spare stored in the forward compartment.

 

Six more coats of spar varnish and it will be ready to race.