 1 My original tiller. Quite aside from NEEDING refinishing, it had other problems. First, by being straight and mounted low, it had to be lifted significantly to be used, effectively shortening it. I could manage it, but Savannagh had some problems with the reduced leverage in heavy seas. More importantly, I wanted to add an autopilot. This meant the tiller had to be fully horizontal, but when horizontal, the angular travel was limited by the lazarettes. A new tiller was clearly called for, but a custom tiller was going to be WAY too expensive for my budget. |
 2 So I found a big block of solid mahagony, got out my jig saw and carved out a tiller. Sand sand sand varnish varnish varnish and .. not quite done. The original tiller had a couple of big hex head bolts running through the stainless mount, fastened with nuts. This meant sharp edges on both sides to snag lines and scratch ankles. I decided to make some internal nuts, threaded all the way through, and use round head bolts from either side. Here we see two bolts installed, one sitting there waiting to be installed. The autopilot bracket is mounted here on the bottom, using cross drilled and tapped rod, the holes hidden with mahogany plugs. Similar bolts and plugs are used to hold the tiller extension on the top. |
 3 The autopilot also needed a solid mount. The commercial RayMarine mount was WAY too expensive and wouldn't sit as square as I'd like, so here's another homemade effort, angled so the mount is nice and square. |
 4 The installation done. |
