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I am just building my steering system and there isn't a lot of detail on how to make the drum.   The question I have is does the drum have to have ridges or grooves to keep the steering rope from tangling or working properly or would a more random wrapping of the steering rope work as well?  As you can see from my recent picture, I've epoxied rope onto the drum to make the spacing for 1/4' steering rope.  Appreciate all inputs.

mike

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Hi Mike,

    We don't have groves in our drum which was a gift of already shaped tuffnel left over from another job and abandoned in our friend's garage.  He came over one day "Can you use this Nev?" and Nev was delighted. Our rope used to slip until Nev fastened it to prevent slippage and he did something to prevent over rides too.  I think Cliff has a pic and maybe you saw it too when you visited.  Ours has worked for nearly 50,000 miles.  But what you have here looks very Wharram like and it looks like it will work maybe with no fastening, no slippage, and maybe no over rides either.  Keep going and see what happens! 

   Either way, the big effort must go into getting the steering line turning blocks to run true.  You must prevent chafe on the steering lines and you must prevent drag and have minimal stretch.  If we turn the wheel even one inch, the tiller bar moves.  That kind of attention to the steering blocks takes time and getting the rope tensioned properly is important too.  Even using the non stretch line, you will need to retension it several times at first.  We have easily adjusted knots and that has worked well for us.  You want responsive steering, no delay in reaction, and reliability.  We use the expensive non stretch rope for steering lines.  It is worth it.

   As you know, we also have a Monitor Wind Vane which works well if you operate the air paddle using a small and inexpensive Tiller Pilot instead of relying on the apparent wind direction as the wind vane was intended to use.  Because Wharrams can accelerate so quickly, the apparent wind changes direction too often.  The tiller pilot works fine and uses little electricity just to operate the air paddle.  We set up our wind vane steering so it can be disconnected from the wheel steering and we can disconnect the windvane steering from wheel steering so neither one will interfere with the operation of the other.  Cliff posted pics of this on our site here at WBF. 

     The good news is that what they say about Wharrams is true.  They are light on the helm and steer like on a train track.  When our helm gets anything like heavy, it is long past time to take a reef.  Very pleasant to steer a Wharram.     Hope to see yours steering towards us soon!

Thanks Guys.   guess i'll just try it out the way it is.   I can always grind it down and change it fairly easily after.  Should work well enough to get to the mooring and back next year.   I was looking at the Wharram self steering set up but it's a problem inherent in all multihulls.   perhaps i'll rig a tiller pilot to trim tabs on one of the rudders.  All this fiddling around will probably be more fun when the boat is actually in the water.

 

 

Nev is here now dictating to me....

What we did is to put about 4 or 5 turns on the drum directly and we anchored the mid point of the steering line to the drum so that there were a couple of turns each side of where he fastened the rope to the drum.  That has worked fine.  Our line is 8 mm but Nev says your 6mm should be ok.   

Mike, get that boat afloat and everything else about her will be settled more happily. 

Nev used plastic water pipe to run the steering lines through because it is friction free and protects the rope from tangling in anything somebody might jam against it by accident.

Everybody (especially Piero) misses you and remember that Piero has a giant pig roast in June at the heard of the cove - mostly boat builders.  Come down, stay on the boat, bring your lady, and lots of pics.  Hug and rum waiting! 

Love,  Ann and Nev

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