Tiller repairs

On the last day of the spring cruise, you may recall, the tiller broke at the base. It was removed and brought home for further investigation ...

 Yup, it's broken!

 Utilising the wonders of modern epoxy, it's not broken any more :)

The finished tiller, glued, screwed, sanded and varnished

The break, on examination, proved to be clean albeit typically (for mahogany) jagged. That though proved useful as it gave an excellent joint for glueing. It went back together with two pack epoxy and once it had cured I clamped the end of the tiller in the workmate and tried to break it again without succeeding

Having sanded and varnished the woodwork, I then glued the stainless end strap to the tiller with more epoxy. Previously, it had just been bolted on with the one visible bolt and therefore doing precious little to reinforce the tiller end. Now it should be adding considerably to the strength of the end piece.

I did consider extending the side plates and looked at various options for doing so but they were all going to be a faff and I decided to give it a go without doing so. We'll see how that pans out

Finally, the hardware was all reattached to the tiller and it's ready to go. We'll test it this coming weekend and report back!