Varnishing. Making the tiller.

Short brake for mountain climbing. The weather was… perfect, if you like rain.

I took Roger’s book in case the weather does not cooperate. It didn’t so I could read it a few times. Good read!

Back to business: sanding and vacuuming the hull. First coat of varnish brushed.

I use Epifanes one-component varnish because I have a lot of it after owning Meritaten. It smells good, flows nicely and I’m used to it after all years using it.

While the varnish was curing I started working on the tiller.
I’ve decided to make it from oak, its profile is rather skinny so I want to have strong wood here. I considered making it in mahogany or lark but decided on oak - to match foredeck and quarter-knees at transom.
A slab of Polish oak, chosen with tree heart in it, so that there is quarter-sawn wood on both sides.

A blank ready, tiller profile transferred.

Some elbow-grease with sanding paper, to remove saw blade marks and to get smooth surface for the next step.

Rounding of edges, in several steps. As the tiller is too narrow to support a router I made a simple routing table.

Gradually shaping it with progressive router bits I finally arrived to almost perfect shape. It is a bit on the beefy side - I did not (yet) introduced a taper as I want to have enough flat surfaces to enable mounting tiller lock and GPS plotter - like I did on Motoko.

Dry-fitting on the boat.