Here's a tool trick that will come in handy anytime you need to adjust or straight-up fix a shell's steering cable: use a spring clamp to hold the rudder straight while you work.

Call it the Boatman's Third Hand Hack.

Whitemarsh Boat Club's Ben Chang wrote in to catch us up on how he uses this "third hand" set-up, which is a perfect workaround for the fact that the rudder itself is usually at the other end of the shell when you are adjusting the steering. Typically, you need an assistant--or willing passer-by in the boatyard--to provide an extra set of hands to keep the rudder in line with the skeg to make sure everything's set correctly, but not with Ben's trick.

His spring clamp approach turns this two-person gig into an easy job for one.

Ben even uses two broken foot-stretcher channels to keep everything straight, which is some good repurposing and the definitely the level of hacking we would expect from a guy who's already shared a few good Rowing Hacks with us, like Sawhorse Low-Boys and Bow Number Bow Lights.

As folks know, working on the steering, at either end, requires more than two hands.

This Boatman's Third Hand Hack gets used a bunch at Ben's club in service of another pretty good trick of his: splicing in just a few feet of new steering cable when there's damage rather than re-cabling the whole boat.

"For quads with toe steering, the cable eventually gets kinked or frayed at the connection with the steering toe. Rather than replacing the entire steering cable when this happens, we at Whitemarsh Boat Club have been replacing just a few of feet of cable near the bow," according to Ben, an approach that can save a lot of cable if the steering is in the bow seat.

"Cut out the damaged section of cable and splice in a segment long enough put the splice at the footwell of the two seat so that the splice doesn't rub on the rower's hips."

Ben uses two 1/16" aluminum crimping loop sleeves to attach the new length of wire--and employs one more bit of "third hand" genius to finish the job.

"Holding the cables and ferrules while squeezing the crimping tool is tough with only two hands, so I use wire holders for soldering to hold the wires and ferrules together while I crimp."

Wire holders, another third hand trick, borrowed from soldering

While frayed steering cable is less of an issue in coxed boats--where the wire doesn't get adjusted nearly every row--this trick can still come in handy when you have a damaged section of cable in any size boat...and as anyone who has threaded a steering cable through a whole shell can attest, any part of the old wire that you can save with this approach is worth it.

Ben pointed out that you can even use this fix over and over.

"If you put the first splice at the bow end of the footwell, you can cut out the spliced cable and replace it with a new segment about a dozen times before the splice runs into a cable guide because the splice is only an inch long."

So, if you find yourself wrangling with steering cables from time to time, might be worth finding space in your toolbox for a spring clamp--and two old foot-stretcher channels of course--so you can fix them solo, too.

Do you have a good trick for getting repairs done more easily on your shells? If so, share your ideas--and hacks--in the comments below.

If you have a great rowing hack to suggest for future inclusion, then please send it to us like Ben did and we will feature your idea in a future column.