Hardwood supplies

[Michael Rogers]

Does anyone know where one can get (relatively) small amounts of hardwood - e.g. utile, sapele, iroko - apart from Robbins?

I hope to make a slightly longer and more 'ergonomic' tiller for my boat. I've got a quote from Robbins, but they won't supply fractions of a metre: 100cm is really too short (if I'm going to do it, I might as well do it properly), but I simply don't need nearly twice as much as I need!

Does anyone have a friendly supplier? They don't seem very thick on the ground.

Michael

[Anthony Huggett]

Are you going for a laminated tiller? If you could buy 3 or 4 m lengths and divide by 2 or 3 to give 1.5 or 1.33 m? Or scarf joint individual layers?

A laminated tiller is very strong, you can put a nice S curve on it, and it is very resistant to rot, which doesn't cross the epoxy layers between the different pieces of wood.

I once had a boat with a solid ash tiller - the surveyor had noted some rot - but it was much more rotten on the inside than it looked and snapped as we reversed into a tricky berth on the Itchen.

[David Hudson]

Ebay

[Peter Taylor]

Try phoning Dave at K J Howells & Son in Poole.... http://www.kjhowells.com/hardwoods_plywoods.html . They mainly stock Teak - if you visit the shop you can rummage through their bins and pick out something which suits. It's a great place if you only want a small piece, there's probably an offcut that will do.  However they do have some other hardwoods so it's worth giving them a try, they are very helpful. Also a place where you can buy good quality marine ply in much smaller sheets than Robbins, for example,  deals in.

Peter

[Michael Rogers]

Thanks! Some ideas to work on. Should have thought of eBay, and will try Howells. I've also located a hardwood supplier, Timbersource Ltd, who are just down the road from here in Frome: as well as the usuals, they've got some hardwoods, e.g. Wenge and Idigbo, I'd never heard of. Worth a look.

I've had wood from Robbins before. Living oop North(ish) as I used to, they always seemed a long way away in Bristol. I'm now near Bath, and it dawned on me this morning that they too are not a million miles away! No shipping costs would be nice.

Anthony, I've gone off laminating: thereby hangs a tale. A separate thread here re Semparoc glue related to a laminated tiller I finished about 10 days ago. Very elegant it looked too, and it worked well - but the second time I used it, it snapped in a F6 gust - *****!! So I'm going for solid hardwood, having checked with Matt that the sort of quite slight curves I need won't be an issue.

Thanks again, everyone.

Michael

[Anthony Huggett]

I'm really surprised that a non-rotten wooded tiller that is fat enough to fit the BR metalwork could snap regardless of construction! I laminated Emily's tiller using unthickened epoxy and a  lot of clamps, using a stiff beam and a couple of scraps of wood to put the bends in, with the layers horizontal. The shape is held by the glue (i.e. I didn't steam the strips to put the shape in first).

In your tiller's case, was it glue failure or did the wood itself fail?
Were the laminates vertical or horizontal?
Did it fail all the way across?

[steve jones]

Michael,

If you live near S.Wales you are welcome to cut some grown timber from my wood or have a couple of tillers I have made up for other boats as spares, if it just for a tiller extension then I'm sure I've have bits laying around.

All the best,

Steve,  BR17  Nona Me

[Michael Rogers]

Anthony, I have to remind you we are talking Trouper 12, not BR, here. The rudder/tiller construction is all wood, and the slot in the rudder stock is 19mm wide. I used 9 horizontal laminates, using 3mm mahogany 'structural ply' because I had some lying around. It was actually surprisingly (I thought) reluctant to bend, hence my query, in my other thread about Semparoc, about steaming. The tiller snapped immediately forward of the rudder stock - presumably the point of maximum horizontal bending force? where it was (had to be) narrowest horizontally, and nowhere near any bend. So far as I can tell, the wood collectively failed. Anyway, I quite enjoyed making it, and it looked v elegant until I used it!

Steve, that's a very friendly offer for which my thanks. However I think I've found just what I need - guess where, on eBay. Nice looking piece of sapele, just the right size and even with delivery it's a bit cheaper than Robbins.

It's being an interesting exercise. The new tiller will be about 12 cm longer than the present one and about 8 cm higher in the boat at the forward end: but the difference that makes to comfort, posture, weight distribution, and reachability of running lines and lockers is remarkable. This is for single-handed sailing - with company, I'll need the shorter one.

Michael