Laminated Tiller construction
Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:34 am
I’ve mentioned before how impressed I was with the laminated tillers that were on the American site that Countrypiper found and that I thought I’d try and make one myself. Well, I had a go and this is what I did.
The first task was to build a steam box to soften the wood. I made the box out of structural ply and the steam generator out of a petrol can and a few plastic fittings. I put several dowels through the box to act as a rack to separate the pieces inside and to stop any staining. I also bought a cheap temperature gauge off ebay so that I could see read the inside temperature of the box. The heat source was a double ring gas burner.
I experimented with using pegs on a rack to bend the wood around but found that that the curve produced wasn’t smooth enough. I then built a solid jig from pine and ply and this worked well.
For my first attempt, (tiller number 1) I used cheap 12mm pine and meranti purchased from Bunnings. This resulted in a tiller that was 36mm thick which required the butt to be machined to fit the rudder stock. I stained the clear pine to put a bit of colour in the wood.
Tiller number 2 was made from Tasmanian Oak, as I wanted to see how well I could bend hardwood. I machined the 12mm timber back to 10mm using my recently acquired Aldi thicknesser (great machine) so that the final thickness would be correct. This time, I soaked the timber for a couple of days before steaming and bending. The timber bent perfectly and this tiller turned out well.
Now that I had worked out the process, I splashed out on some quality timber. I had intended to use American Ash and Mahogany laminated but replaced the Mahogany with American Walnut for the darker central wood. The timber came in 6”x2” planks and were sawn so that I could cut my strips as quarter-sawn pieces. After steaming and bending, I glued the pieces using Epiglue and finished the timber using a router, plane and sander. I feature I liked on the American tillers was the knob on the end, so I replicated this on this tiller.
I’m fairly happy with the finished product but might do some more experimenting. I purchased some Australian Ash along with the American timbers so I’ll make one more, all Qld timber, tiller to add to my collection.
Here are a few photos of the process.
The first task was to build a steam box to soften the wood. I made the box out of structural ply and the steam generator out of a petrol can and a few plastic fittings. I put several dowels through the box to act as a rack to separate the pieces inside and to stop any staining. I also bought a cheap temperature gauge off ebay so that I could see read the inside temperature of the box. The heat source was a double ring gas burner.
I experimented with using pegs on a rack to bend the wood around but found that that the curve produced wasn’t smooth enough. I then built a solid jig from pine and ply and this worked well.
For my first attempt, (tiller number 1) I used cheap 12mm pine and meranti purchased from Bunnings. This resulted in a tiller that was 36mm thick which required the butt to be machined to fit the rudder stock. I stained the clear pine to put a bit of colour in the wood.
Tiller number 2 was made from Tasmanian Oak, as I wanted to see how well I could bend hardwood. I machined the 12mm timber back to 10mm using my recently acquired Aldi thicknesser (great machine) so that the final thickness would be correct. This time, I soaked the timber for a couple of days before steaming and bending. The timber bent perfectly and this tiller turned out well.
Now that I had worked out the process, I splashed out on some quality timber. I had intended to use American Ash and Mahogany laminated but replaced the Mahogany with American Walnut for the darker central wood. The timber came in 6”x2” planks and were sawn so that I could cut my strips as quarter-sawn pieces. After steaming and bending, I glued the pieces using Epiglue and finished the timber using a router, plane and sander. I feature I liked on the American tillers was the knob on the end, so I replicated this on this tiller.
I’m fairly happy with the finished product but might do some more experimenting. I purchased some Australian Ash along with the American timbers so I’ll make one more, all Qld timber, tiller to add to my collection.
Here are a few photos of the process.