by GreenLake » Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:54 pm
A laminated tiller would sure look nice.
There's strength and there's strength. For a tiller you normally don't want "brittle" strength; that said, laminates may well have a bit of extra, so that may not be as critical. Clearly, many professionally done tillers are laminated.
I don't know whether mine is original, but it's single piece and looks like ash to me. If not original to the DS, it's still professionally made (note the detail I mentioned). It held up pretty well, but after varnishing a few times I tumbled on the epoxy coating and that's made the coating much more durable (varnish doesn't crack over epoxy, because the wood no longer swells).
From my experience I would say that single piece tillers also work. (Btw. in addition to the rivet going horizontally through the shaft where it starts to form the fork, each end of the fork has a smaller rivet, vertically, in an attempt to prevent the fork from splitting from the force of the tiller pin. Nice thoughtful details. ... Lamination might make these last ones redundant, because if the fibers are angled as in plywood, then some would resist this very splitting. But even in a laminated rudder there isn't anything that strengthens the base of the fork.)
Reason I'm slightly questioning the provenance of my tiller is that it may be just a bit longer than typical for the DS. (That question came up eons ago in some context here). I like it, because it extends the seating positions from where I can use it w/o tiller extension. It's important to not limit the ability to swing up, sometimes I need to swing it up to get across. Best not to rig any downhaul in such a way that it locks the tiller in the down position...
~ green ~ lake ~ ~