out board stick steering

[klitz]

I see some designs use stick steering for the outboard. It appears to be a handle mounted on the side gunwale and moves fwd and back for right and left. I've also seen some plans that have a wheel mounted the same way. Is that the same design of steering using a wheel inplace of the stick? Could the wheel be mounted crosswise so turning it would be left and right or must this type of steering run fwd and aft? Thanks, klitz.

[David G]

Any of these variations works quite well.

[klitz]

I checked your website but don't see any stick steering for outboards?

[David G]

The few fotos there are just a sampler of the work I've done over the years, though I've never done a boat with standard console, transverse-mounted steering wheel. I have, however, taken them apart to get them out of the way for repairs and refinishing, then put them back together. All three variations you mention are pretty similar, and all work just fine. The only tricky part with the stick version is that some folks have trouble remembering if a push forward equates to 'left'... or 'right'.

[pipefitter]

I see some designs use stick steering for the outboard. It appears to be a handle mounted on the side gunwale and moves fwd and back for right and left. I've also seen some plans that have a wheel mounted the same way. Is that the same design of steering using a wheel inplace of the stick? Could the wheel be mounted crosswise so turning it would be left and right or must this type of steering run fwd and aft? Thanks, klitz.

We have installed some stick steering systems. The stick steering unit has a much shorter throw ratio than the wheel unit does. In other words, you would have to rotate the wheel a couple complete 360 deg turns to make the motor turn as much as say 120 degrees of the stick unit. The stick unit that uses a single teleflex cable, has about as much travel, stop-to-stop, as an avg throttle/gear lever does. Of course the ratio of turns makes the wheel easier to throw, but being as most stick systems are located near the rear of the boat, closer to the engine, the cable is typically much shorter with less bends etc, resulting in less friction overall.

I should note that the stick systems we have installed, were with outboards 25hp or less, or engines that could be operated easily with a standard tiller.

[klitz]

Are the wheels ever mounted crosswise or always parallel with the gunwale? Do you know of any diagrams that show how this method works. I see stick steering available for sale but they have sticks. Do you simply replace the stick with a small wheel? I don't know anything about this method of steering but it sounds simpler than a conventional wheel on console. I will be using either a 8 or 9.9 outboard. Thanks for your response.

[David G]

klitz - sounds like you need to read up on steering systems a bit:

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=...ring%20systems

[klitz]

I'll do some further research since you are unable to answer my questions.

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

Um, Klitz -- David's just taken the trouble to give you three responses to your questions. If you're not happy with the answers, perhaps it's because you're not asking the right questions. It seems to me that he'll be perfectly well-able to tell you what you want to know as soon as you know what you do want to know. To help determine that, I think you'd be well-advised to follow the link he's given you in Post #7. Burn him off in the meanwhile, though, and he might not want to bother....

Mike

[MiddleAgesMan]

Hand me the butter!

I didn't want butter, I said BREAD!

What? No bread?

Well, since that's so much trouble I'll take some of that butter after all...

[klitz]

Responses are not answers, I asked several specific questions and got nothing back. Good bye WBforum

[MiddleAgesMan]

You got answers to your questions, sir. David's was a valiant attempt to read between the lines then Pipefitter gave you an exact answer. I guess you couldn't be bothered to read it.

[Steamboat]

Klitz,

I am sorry to say that I believe you were well answered, however you may not have understood the answer. Some basic reading or a visit to a boat yard or marine parts supplier may make the answer more clear.

[Breakaway]

Kiltz--stop whining. You can rig the steering cable to a wheel, a stick, a mahogany cube cut from the burl of an old growth tree if you like. In any and all events, the engine turns one way when the cable is pulled and the other way when the cable is pushed.

Kevin

[John Bell]

I used to have an aluminum fishing boat with 35 HP Evinrude and stick steering on one side. It's an excellent solution for small outboard boats, IMO. It's very space-efficient and easy to use. It used a teleflex-type push-pull cable to connect to the motor. Teleflex cables have pretty much replaced the old cable and pulley systems for outboards these days.

I would not suggest replacing the ~2' long stick with a smaller wheel however. The stick only travels through about 160-200 degrees lock to lock. You need the extra leverage of the longer stick to control the motor. If you replace that 2' stick witha 12" wheel, it would be same as cutting the stick down to 6" and will require a lot more force to turn the motor.

If you want wheel steering, then buy wheel steering. The gearbox on a wheel steered teleflex system operates at much lower ratio than a stick steer box with something like 2.5 turns (900 degrees lock to lock) for a small motor and ~ 4 turns for larger motors.

Putting a small wheel on a stick-steer box would be tantamount to cutting off the tiller on your outboard and steering it by the carrying handle on the front of the motor.

[sailboy3]

klitz

Re: out board stick steering
Responses are not answers, I asked several specific questions and got nothing back. Good bye WBforum

that was quick...
Oh well.

[John A. Campbell]

Very soon I will be building Tom Hill's "Pamet Blue" 14'10" ultralight outboard skiff and will use a 2 hp Honda outboard. This engine has no reverse.....you simply spin the engine all the way around to get reverse thrust and i'm not too comfortable with sitting that far back and turning it so I'm looking at perhaps using a very small ship's wheel or equivalent......will be doing some research.....any suggestions will be appreciated.

John

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

John -- A friend of mine had one of those motors on an 8' or so fg dinghy. Sitting in the sternsheets to spin it didn't seem to be any problem for him, but then that's where he was normally helming from anyway. Perhaps in your boat you'll need to be seated somewhere amidships for weight distribution purposes?


Sailboy -- surely --

?

Mike

[leaotis]

"Dispatch" had axe handle steering. Good for maneuvering in tight spots. Everybody that drove that boat loved it. Steering stick is in the driver's left hand, throttle in the right.

[Dale Genther]

I had a 30 ft. Chesapeake Deadrise boat with inboard gas V8 in it. It had a normal wheel station forward and a push/pull tiller aft. I loved the tiller, you could go hard over to hard over in about 3 seconds, which was much faster than the 4 turns lock to lock wheel. Also, which way to move the tiller to go to port or starboard was easy for me to remember, forward for port aft for starboard. When steering in reverse it seemed, at least to me, that it was easier to remember weather to push or pull then which way to turn the wheel. The only problem was when steering in reverse at speed fast enough to actually steer in reverse. you had to be carefull to not put the rudder too hard over or the water pressure would slam to all the way over and you couldn't bring it back to center. I broke the tiller that way once. Chesapeake Deadrises, with their rudders, can easily be steered in reverse with 2-3 knots of sternway. My new 35 ft. deadrise has a wheel in both positions, which, for me, makes it more difficult to back into a slip.

As a side note, for the curious, you can find several old wood deadrises's for sale at deadrise4sale.com. That is where we found our new one. BTW I have no interest financial or otherwise in that website. I just like seeing some of the old boats being sold and hopefully being saved by being converted to pleasure use, as mine was, and a bunch of others are.

[JimConlin]

I came across this gizmo:

http://www.ezyglide.com/index.html

[John Bell]

I came across this gizmo:

http://www.ezyglide.com/index.html

That's what we've been discussing. I like them very much for small outboard boats.

[John A. Campbell]

I think you are correct about that and also, I think some forward ballast wouldn't hurt.....maybe 50 lbs of sand? My first experience with the little Honda was in my 10-ft skiff "Annabelle", a John Atkin design. I rolled her over on my first outing and was immediately rescued by two lovely young women who were watching me launch her. I really didn't need the rescue effort as the water wasn't but maybe 5 feet deep and i could have walked out with little difficulty and besides that, i had on a good life jacket. The rescue effort was quite nice and I have been out there a few other times hoping to get rescued again but no luck so far (!).

John -- A friend of mine had one of those motors on an 8' or so fg dinghy. Sitting in the sternsheets to spin it didn't seem to be any problem for him, but then that's where he was normally helming from anyway. Perhaps in your boat you'll need to be seated somewhere amidships for weight distribution purposes?


Sailboy -- surely --

?

Mike

[Draketail]

Here's a skiff at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum with a steering stick:



And here are three pictures of a similar arrangement on the CBMM's 45 ft draketail; Martha;

[JimConlin]

That's what we've been discussing. I like them very much for small outboard boats.

Are there other such gizmos manufactured, or is this the only one?
And what do they cost?

[David G]

I've only seen the one brand of manufactured stick steering. Most of the ones I've seen have been shop-built for the specific application.

[Geoff Pike]

Hey John,
Half baked idea, but what about two "pulleys". One at hand for a steering wheel, the other attached on axis with the motor. Couple of wraps of rope on either. When one wheel turns, so does the other. If you played with the diameters, you could gear it for ease.

Like I said, half baked.

[oldsub86]

Here is a 1954 Lyman with side steering and 2 wheels. Not mine. Just something that was offered for sale here a while back that I saved a photo of.
Not a whole lot different from a cable system with the wheel mounted on the dash instead of the side apart from a couple more pulleys.

Randy

[oldsub86]

Actually, sort of a nice looking old boat. Don't recall what they were asking for it but it has been offered a couple of times in the past year or two.

Randy

[Eddiebou]

My 2cts- 'Round here, we always called 'em tiller sticks. Some work by ropes/cables through blocks, some work by a steel rod that pushes/pulls on a yoke attached to the rudder.

[John A. Campbell]

Not a bad idea at all......I use rope steering on an electric canoe which uses only the motor and part of the motor shaft in concert with a wooden member and yoke that hinges to the aft stem which is reinforced. The rope runs through brass tube & wood guides located under the inwales to a pair of small brass pulleys and returns back to the opposite side of the yoke. The rope is crossed at the yoke so you turn to port when you pull on the left side and starboard when you pull on the right side. Something like this would probably work with the little Honda but would require a longer "throw" when swinging the motor all the way around to get reverse thrust.....then there's also the challenge of throttle control from an amidships location so we will work on that, too. Maybe the stick steering would work better assuming some sort of cable could be included with the stick to control the throttle.

Hey John,
Half baked idea, but what about two "pulleys". One at hand for a steering wheel, the other attached on axis with the motor. Couple of wraps of rope on either. When one wheel turns, so does the other. If you played with the diameters, you could gear it for ease.

Like I said, half baked.

[Sgali]

I just saw one of these on craigslist if anyone is interested. Here is the link.

http://raleigh.craigslist.org/boa/2815873214.html

[Rainmaker]

I am quite interested in the Ezy Stik system shown up in post #21. I have done some more digging, but thus far haven't been able to find out how the system is configured. With the Stik mounted on the port side (the only way I have seen it), do you push the Stik forward to turn to starboard and pull the Stik aft to turn to port? Or is it the other way around? My brain would be happiest with the first scenario.

Also, as I mentioned I have only found pictures of the unit mounted on the port side of the boat, can the Stik be starboard mounted with the cable attaching from the starboard side of the motor?

Thanks, Kirk

[John Bell]

I've only ever seen them configured for the port side. I'd suggest contacting the manufacturer if you have questions.

Onthe boat I had with such a set-up, it was very intuitive to use. The tiller was on port and the throttle was on starboard. You pushed the tiller forward to turn to starboard and pulled it aft to turn to port.

[Irv Mac Dowell]

I had a 13 ft. Boston Whaler in the 80's. It was set up as a freshwater bass boat with fore and aft centerline seats. The stick steering was a cable and pulley system that was a lot of fun to drive at high speed. I had a Johnson 40 on it and it could top 35 miles an hour. I always felt very secure sitting mid-ships in a padded seat and tearing around a choppy Barnegat Bay with the hull half out of the water at times. Only problem was that it couldn't go to engine lock-to-lock, so at slow speeds i couldn't make a tight turn. The push/pull rod would have solved that problem, but Whaler didn't use it. i think that model only lasted two years.
Best regards,


irv

[peabody]

Now this is a interesting thread. !

[Rainmaker]

I've only ever seen them configured for the port side. I'd suggest contacting the manufacturer if you have questions.

Onthe boat I had with such a set-up, it was very intuitive to use. The tiller was on port and the throttle was on starboard. You pushed the tiller forward to turn to starboard and pulled it aft to turn to port.

Thanks very much John. The push-pull arrangement is as I would have thought. I sent an email to the manufacturer regarding starboard mounting a couple of days ago, no response as yet so I thought I would try the wealth of knowledge on the forums. Hopefully the manufacturer will answer my questions sometime in the future.

Thanks again, Kirk

[Tom Jackson]

WoodenBoat has an article coming up in No. 227 by Harry Bryan which includes information about stick steering. If anybody here is in touch with the original post author, can you let him know?

[Oldad]

Looking at the drawing of the EZY it seems to me that you could mount it on either side, port or starboard. If you mount it on the starboard side you would need to add a bit more of length to the cable for the loop to bring the cable aft. Almost as it is shown in the picture. Clear as mud probably. English not so good me
Oldad

[peabody]

"Dispatch" had axe handle steering. Good for maneuvering in tight spots. Everybody that drove that boat loved it. Steering stick is in the driver's left hand, throttle in the right.

What if your in a wide boat?

[leaotis]

What if your in a wide boat?

Dispatch was:

• Length 25' 10"
• Beam 9' 2"

which seemed pretty wide to me.

[leaotis]

What if your in a wide boat?

Dispatch was 25'10" x 9'2"

Pretty wide to me.

[peabody]

Oh my ...now that is one big boat!

[Outlaw]

look at the new wooden boat. nice artical about rope stick steering.

Outlaw