• Twin Tillers - Building Your Own

  • Here is a very simple way to create some professional looking Twin Tillers for your 29er at a cost of only $50US bucks.

    What you'll need
    1. Pair of cross country ski poles - at least 150 cm long
    2. 1 Ronstan universal joint end fittings - RONST#RF3133
    3. One small nail or metal pin
    4. Black electrical tape
    5. 4 rivets


    Equipment needed
    1. Hack Saw
    2. Drill
    3. Grinder adapter for your drill
    4. Rivet gun


    To start Julian Bethwaite recommends not using any thing shorter than 1.4 meters or 55 inches long. He also recommends using an alloy instead of carbon fiber.
    The big problem with creating
    twin tillers is finding aluminum tubing the right length and with one end tapered for the Ronstan rubber adapter. After searching around a bit we found some Very Long Cross Country Ski Poles which seemed to be perfect (The ones we used were 150 cm). Make sure you get the longest pair that is longer than 1.4 meters because you will have to cut off some. Also find a pair with a good diameter and taper on one end. Stay away from the extremely skinny ones. You can take your Ronstan rubber adapter with you on your hunting trip. (Note - your rubber adapter won't fit in the pole until you do some grinding)


  • Step One First thing to do is cut off part of the tapered end. Make sure you don't cut the length shorter than 55 inch or 1.4 meters. You have to cut some of the taper off so you have a large enough diameter to fit in the Ronstan Rubber Adapter







  • Step Two
    Take a look at your Rubber Tiller adapter. This piece you will stick in the tapered end of your ski pole. You may have to grind down the rubber adapter so it will fit into the ski pole. We had to do this because if we cut the ski pole any shorter it would have been shorter than 1.4 meters. (We ground quite a bit off)


    Grinding the rubber adapter was very simple and we used a simple drill with a grinder/sander pad. We just kept grinding and checking to see if we could stick the adapter into the end of the ski pole. Eventually we got the diameter of the rubber adapter small enough to where with a few hits with a hammer it slide in.

    IMPORTANT - Don't forget to slide your Ronstan plastic cover on to the ski pole before you insert the rubber adapter.



  • Step Three
    Once the Rubber Adapter is fully inserted into the ski pole you will have to drill a small hole through the ski pole and the rubber adapter. This hole is so you can insert a holding pin to hold the rubber adapter in place.


    We used a simple nail. Once the nail was fully inserted we cut off part of the end and bent it over.






    Next we used Electrical tape and wrapped it tightly around the ski pole to cover our nail. Great! At this point you now have One Tiller completed. Do the same thing with the other cross-country ski pole.







  • Step Four Now it's time to drill your tiller and rivet.
    Use the Ronstan plastic pieces as a guide for marking your holes. You will drill 2 holes per each side in the tiller.

    (Attach the pieces to the sides of your tiller. And, keep the top one in place in case you want to use your single tiller extension. You will have 3 total on your tiller)


    Simply insert your tiller extensions onto the tiller and snap the covers in place. We tape over the plastic caps completely around the tiller for extra security. Nothing more frustrating than having a tiller extension in your hand not connected to the tiller when you are trying to tack.


    Here you will see how we re-rigged the rear triangle and bungee's. The bunee's from the footstraps to the block keep the tiller extensions from falling back behind the transom.

    Now go have some fun!



    Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or improvements on the tillers to: the webmaster



  • ...back to technical tips