mnl

Yes, with a tiller it’s not really a convenient place to sit, but it makes an ok place to set your lunch. I would put main cleats on the deck behind the back corners of the cockpit. BTW, the sides of the cockpit where you have the jib cleats must be stout and the cleats through bolted. It’s really a drag to get hit with a big puff and have the cleat rip out, or the side of the cockpit. One problem with putting them up in the air like that is there is now a lever arm down to wherever the side attaches.

Sherline is good, WABECO is better, Aciera or Sixis are best.

Look at your bottom picture. It’s much easier to see where you’re going from the high side. The article you found looks like it gives some solid advice. Also if in the picture of the cockpit there is a large batten running down the center to brace your feet against. In the lower picture you can see that the helmsman is also using the binnacle as a foot brace. It’s hard to get comfortable if you don’t feel secure and sliding around is a great way to not feel secure.

You missed the most interesting feature in that picture. Look at the person sitting in front of the wheel. They are sitting across the cockpit with their feet braced against the seat on the other side. That's why cockpits tend to be about that wide, so it is easy to brace yourself. Also, you can brace yourself on a wheel, it's much harder to do that on a tiller. The flattie above looks to be fairly far off the breeze. The boom is out beyond the corner of the transom. There will be less heel and it will be easier to wedge yourself in the corner on the low side. You can also see the battens on the cockpit sole to give some foot purchase. It will be a little less fun if the boat is a little closer to the breeze so that the boom is just inside the corner of the cockpit. Now there isn't room to get between the boom and the tiller so you have to steer from the high side. Also if there is a bit of a breeze there will be a little more heel which makes it harder to stand. Add in the current running the opposite direction, generally happens twice a day on the Bay, and you get the washing machine slop. That makes it really hard to have to steer standing up.

My main reason for wanting a tiller extension in the sharpie was visibility, not balance. The back of the cockpit is wide and the house looks fairly high. Even standing you probably won’t see very much. It’s sure nice to be able to sit on the high side and see. You might be surprised at how much difference moving out a few feet makes. In light air I will have my crew sit on the low side simply so I can drive from the high side. We could just as easily both sit in the center of the boat, balance would be about the same, but neither of us would be able to see much.

I beg to differ. The best time I have had sailing in years was last fall when we turned the weather mark in 28 kts and reached off surfing down a wave at 15.5 kts (gps measurement). Both of us were hiking hard, and even though we were well behind the center of the boat we were sitting in the bow wave.

“Of course my goal is to get as close to how it would have been set up at the end of the 19th century, not what would be most comfortable for me right now.” Except there would never have been a singular way to do it. Small boats like these were built by dozens if not hundreds of builders around the Chesapeake. Everyone of them had their own take on a design, and that design was only the starting point. Even today there are at least a couple of dozens still around. While most of them have sort of standard designs they are all willing to heavily customize if you are willing to pay. Want to leave the keel off your power boat to get an extra half a knot. I know someone who will build it that way, and also someone who ordered one that way. If you’re going to be standing up pulling nets or pots or tonging oysters for hours wouldn’t you want to be able to take a load off your back on the way home?

A lot of what a work boat does is go from point a to point b so it can do what it needs to do when it gets there. That can easily take an hour or two or three. Want to go from your dock in the river out to the Bay, easily an hour or two. Even if you go out early, you still have to sail home when the sun is up and hot. In summer on the Chesapeake that probably also means in four or five knots of breeze. I’d just as soon not have to stand all day if I could avoid it. Besides, look at any work crew anywhere. How many guys are standing in the sun if they can sit in the shade.

I don’t know the history of the hiking stick. I was just trying to figure out how to deal with the wide cockpit. Look at his scale, it’s 32” from the center line to the edge of the cockpit. You won’t be sitting on the deck and holding the tiller. With the coaming sticking up like it does it would be misery to have to try and sit where you could hold the tiller for an extended period of time. I would never have thought of it, but with the wide cockpit with the seat across the back could actually work. He drew a short tiller, so if you slide over to the rounded section at the outside edge you could push the tiller behind you. In any event you’re going to do a little pirouette around the tiller whenever you tack or gybe. as I said, personal preference. I would pick option 2: a narrower cockpit set up so I could sit on the deck and see where I was going. Or more likely build up something on the deck that was elevated just above the coaming edge that you could sit on, but that left a gap to the coaming so that the waves didn’t drain into the cockpit. This was WAY before the Elvstrom bailer. Think of a slatted bench seat.

Some of this is personal preference. Consider a couple of examples. Take your boat and put it on starboard tack with the breeze somewhere in front of the beam so it is going to weather. Now sit on the seat on the high (right) side. Why high side? The boat will be heeling at least a little and with the sails on the other side it is hard to see anything from down there. Look forward and grab the tiller. Unless you are a lot more of a contortionist than me, you will take the tiller in your left hand which will be inboard and slightly behind when you twist a little to comfortably look forward. This leaves you right hand free to trim sails, which is easier if the sheets come down and cleat in front of you. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I raced on a boat, where because of the design of the main reefing system, the main sheet tackle mounted to the end of the boom and came down to a traveler behind the cockpit. The first thing we did when we got our hands on the boat was put a tiller extension on it. I think we also added several inches to the length of the tiller. Now the tiller extension basically came off the tiller at ninety degrees and passed in front of the helmsman who would hold it in his right hand. He could then reach back with the left to trim the main. This worked ok where there was a cam cleat on the main that could be cleated without looking. In this case the jib was led farther forward so the jib trimmer could sit between the helmsman and the jib cleat. If we were sailing short handed the helmsman had to cleat the main, transfer the tiller extension to the left hand and then slide forward to trim the jib. Work board typically have fewer crew than a race boat so this would just be added hassle for the helmsman. But like I said, personal preference. As far as needing to push the tiller to leeward, you generally try and trim the sails to give a bit of weather helm. So going along you need to pull the tiller just slightly towards you. You need to push the tiller to fall off the breeze. But depending on the sail plan and the size of the rudder, you may have to ease the main to fall off. You can’t push the tiller enough by itself to make boat fall off. Then when you ease the main the boat will fall off without touching the tiller much if at all.

There is nothing wrong with a longer tiller in option 1.

Either one is much better. Option two is better for visibility, not sure if it is too much of a reach to the tiller. I don’t know if boats of that period had tiller extensions or not. I would take that with an extension any day. Option one is probably more comfortable for driving, but not so good for holding a course. In the Chesapeake bay you are rarely out of site of land, so you can steer by landmarks on shore. However, the utility of that goes down quickly as the landmark moves from ahead. if you extend the seat forward in option one so you can also sit one the high side when you really need to see, that might be the best option.

Twist yourself a little person up out of wire. All you need are correct length arms and legs to check for reach. The tiller should be comfortable to hold, someone will be doing it for hours. Another thing to consider is where to sit. It’s hard to trim the jib if you can’t see it. It’s also nice to be able to see where you are going. If you sit too far inboard your view will be blocked by the house. The Chapelle main will need a cleat on either side of the cockpit, not on the back of the cockpit. That would make it difficult for the person steering. The Chapelle tiller also looks more user friendly. It looks to be a little longer and a little higher, so probably easier to work with.

It doesn’t look like a very nice boat to sail. The cockpit is almost too wide. You can’t sit on the high side and still reach the tiller. A tiller extension or hiking stick would be nice. So it will be hard to see where your going, and forget seeing the jib. There needs to be a cleat for the main on each side of the tiller. You do end up cleating the main quite a bit as you only have two hands. There would probably have been some sort of bench inside the coaming. There would also need to be some cleats on the cockpit sole to brace feet against so you don’t slide off the seat when the boat heels. The jib cleats should be far enough forward that you can sit between them and the tiller. That way you can cleat the jib with the hand you aren’t driving with.

Two basic guidelines: the run of the line to the cleat wants to be fair and the cleat should be convenient for the person doing the cleating. For example, you would want to be able to watch the sail as you cleat the sheet.

Anything McMaster sells should suffice for your needs. You probably won’t know the manufacturer until you get them as they can source from multiple vendors. You are looking for high speed steel in either bright finish or black oxide. The more exotic coatings are for serious production scenarios. if you care about manufacturers you can call McMaster and they will tell you or you can order from MSC or Travers which list them in their catalogs. You would be looking for ones like Guhring (my usual go-to), Chicago-Latrobe, Precision Twist Drill, Hertel, Dormer, or Cleveland. In smaller sizes the point and flute types don’t matter so much. If you can find them in the size you need, consider screw machine drills. They are shorter than standard length jobber drills. This makes them a little easier to manage in less than perfect setups.

The Morse taper is not the problem. The potential problem is how it is retained in the socket. Since it is a drill press it is likely that it is just held by friction and there will be a slot in the quill with the end of the tang visible. You use a drift against that to knock the male taper loose from the socket. Morse tapers used in milling machines have a treaded hole in the end for a drawbar to pull them up tight. Those will not release under side load because of the pulling action of the drawbar.

If it is a Morse taper spindle with a tang release don’t do it. The side pressure can cause the taper to release. If it has a drawbar, which is unlikely for a drill press, it is OK.

Bar shrouds must have been the old name for rod rigging.

Racing sails were generally Egyptian cotton. Cloth weight would depend on the amount of breeze the sail was designed for. The lighter the breeze the lighter the cloth. The goal was to minimize the weight aloft as that weight has a large moment arm.

What you are drilling is also very important. If you are only drilling wood, then almost anything will do. If you are planning on drilling metal the something from MSC, McMaster, Travers, etc will be much better. Finishes have to do with chip clearance, nothing you will worry about with a pin vice. If you are drilling at 15000, rpm with commensurate feed, then you do. If you are going to drill fiberglass then carbide is almost essential. Twist drills are not required, for thin metal you can do quite well with homemade spade drills, even in hard steel. George Daniels tells you about them in Watchmaking. You can also grind your own D bits. Drills like these can be much better to use because you can chuck them much closer to the tip. This will reduce the chance of breakage.

If you have a small table saw that will take a slotting saw blade it is fairly easy to make a fixture to hold the tube while you run it through the saw. A block of wood bored to the o.d. of the tube and the length of the tube. The make two tapered plugs bored to take a piece of suitable all thread. Slide the tube into the block, insert a plug in each end and draw up the bolt. That will hold the tube while you run it through the saw. Remove the plugs, slide the tube out and rotate it 180 degrees. Put it back in the block, insert the plugs and draw the up tight. That will expand the tube against the block. Run it through the saw again, remove the plugs and the two halves will fall out.

If you a seriously set on brass, you can always buy a piece of 7/8” dia x .065” wall from McMaster for ~$30 and turn the o.d. on a mandrel.

Your other possibility would be to go to any of the ME site and look for a good pillar drill. You don’t need 10k rpm, it will only hurt you if you can’t feed fast enough.

The Servo will make a very nice drill press. It is not a mill. The basic Sherline does not have a quill, it will make a bad drill press. The ability to feed consistently and fast enough is more important than the absolute speed. If the drill rubs, any but the lowest carbon steels will work harden and that will be that. I don’t know how well the Sherline sensitive feed works. The machines are quite nice, but somewhat compromised to hit a price point. If your priority is really making small holes consider a Dumore 16 sensitive drilling machine. Those are very nice. If you can find one, an old Electro-Mechano is equally good. Wait a minute, stop presses... If you are in the U.K. do you not know of Cowells? As in cowells.com. Have a look there and report back.