Tiller drawing

Somebody asked for more details about this tiller, so here's everything:

Here's the cloth layout I used. It feels very solid as I lean on the various parts, so it should be strong enough. Sleeves came from Soller Composites, I used their 2.5"ø medium weight carbon sleeve.

The process is:

Use a paint brush to coat the shaped foam core with a heavy cream mix of epoxy and microlight filler.

On a plastic covered table, wet out the uni strips, squeegie-ing from both sides if needed to get all fibers wet. Then apply the uni strips to sides of the foam core.

My strips were sized so that they just barely lapped onto the top and bottom surfaces, giving them a sort of C-shape when installed. The important part is the stuff on the sides, though.

Next start wetting out the sleeves on the table, starting with the shorter ones.

Slide the sleeves over the ends- it's a little sticky, but by bunching and milking the sleeves over the ends, they'll pass over the wet layer below (I had to adjust on of the ineer layers slightly after this, but it wasn't a big deal).

Lastly wet out the full length sleeve and slide it over the rest, making sure there's a couple inches left over at each end. Soller recommends rolling or inverting the sleeve rather than sliding it on (like pantyhose or a condom), but I didn't have any trouble just sliding it on by gently bunching and milking it over.

Clamp one end of the left over sleeve and hang the tiller, and then firmly milk the sleeve upward and downward to compress it as much as possible. Hang another clamp from the bottom bit of left over sleeve to let gravity help out.

From here there are a few finishing options- I just let it cure after the last step above. You can also wrap this layup with spiral strips of peel ply for probably the best fiber consolidation and strength, with some risk of making the surface a little lumpy as the peel ply doesn't make all the curves, unless you have a fairly straight-sided tiller. Another option is to come back in a couple hours (after the initial epoxy has gelled) and add another coat or more of epoxy for a smooth finish with no sanding. I waited, cleaned off the blush, did some additional laminations for my rudder connection, then coated the whole finished tiller. The heavy weave of this sleeve weight will require at least on more coat to fill, but I don't think it will be needed- a little texture won't hurt anything.