Thread: A new Hartley TS16

Hi Elmo,

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step" - or something like that.

Well done on making a start - I'll be watching with interest.

Mike

That yellow machine on the left in the second picture wouldn't be there to hide any evidence of mistakes would it?

Mick

ONYA Bloke !!
AJ

Originally Posted by MikeyRoberts

Hi Elmo,

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step" . . .

Mike

They've been telling me this in AA for years, but it really hasn't worked . . .

Another Hartley? :eek:
Mate, you do realise that you're denying yourself the pleasures of taming an evil design

I learnt to build boats with a bloke who dearly wanted to go dinghy sailing. Trouble was, he was so big he didn't fit into any of them ... until he discovered the TS16

Good boat. Have fun. Keep us amused and DON'T HIDE THE STUFF UPS - they're the only thing that keeps us going with our own builds

Richard

So we dug out some bricks (they were laid vertically, tough job) and cemented the stocks into the ground so it will stay perfectly level. Now to build a boat.

Originally Posted by MikeyRoberts

Hi Elmo,

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step" - or something like that.

Mike

Is that right !!!?? I thought it started with a flat battery & a puncture !

On a serious note though, looking at the jig legs - I don't know what your plans say about dimensions.
It looks like it will wobble side to side once you start doing serious work on top of it.

I built my work table fairly similar with 120x19 pine legs but found they were too flimsy.
The whole table rocks side-to-side when using plane or sandpaper. Partly fixed this by screwing &
glueing vertical 45x19 stiffeners at right-angles to the legs. They really need to be more like 70 or
90 x19 to cure the wobble completely. Hasn't stopped me building 4 kayaks, 3 paddles, 3 booms &
2 yards on it, plus sundry other stuff. But the wobble is irritating, and risks spilling my drink.
So a suggested mod below.
cheers
AJ

Originally Posted by b.o.a.t.

Is that right !!!?? I thought it started with a flat battery & a puncture !

On a serious note though, looking at the jig legs - I don't know what your plans say about dimensions.
It looks like it will wobble side to side once you start doing serious work on top of it.

I built my work table fairly similar with 120x19 pine legs but found they were too flimsy.
The whole table rocks side-to-side when using plane or sandpaper. Partly fixed this by screwing &
glueing vertical 45x19 stiffeners at right-angles to the legs. They really need to be more like 70 or
90 x19 to cure the wobble completely. Hasn't stopped me building 4 kayaks, 3 paddles, 3 booms &
2 yards on it, plus sundry other stuff. But the wobble is irritating, and risks spilling my drink.
So a suggested mod below.
cheers
AJ

Thanks AJ, I will go home today and give it a vigorous shake and see. It seems solid as a rock though now that it has been concreted in. Especially with the cross supports.

Hadn't thought about them being concreted in. That would help a lot.
Mine are just sitting on the ground so they are free to hinge at that point.
Your legs being a bit shorter will also help.
Maybe I am just being an old woman...

Was browsing pictures of TS16s the other night. Gee it's a nice looking hull.
Pity about the clunky cabin plonked on it. I understand (I think) how & why
it came to be so, but... Only $45 for plans... hmmmm... The economics
don't stack up for me to build one, but maybe...
cheers
AJ

We decided to make up the frames and stems out of MDF first to get an idea of how it is done and to make sure we dont waste any timber.

Good thing we did as we made a few rookie errors. You can start to see what the shape of the boat will look like though.

Originally Posted by b.o.a.t.

I understand (I think) how & why
it came to be so, but... Only $45 for plans... hmmmm... The economics
don't stack up for me to build one, but maybe...
cheers
AJ

AJ, interested to know what you meant by that. Don't cheap plans help to make it economic to build? Thousands of home builders have thought it worthwhile. It's still the largest trailer-sailer class in Australia.

The economics of build from scratch vs. buy an old one. The plans are about 1% of
the new build cost, or 2% of the fix-up-an-old-one cost. Insignificant in the overall
scheme of things.

I don't feel that the TS is the 'right' boat for me. It's a great boat, and I love some parts
of it. At the one moment, I have utterly conflicting wishes about the next boat. I want
both a both a lighter, more compact craft that goes like a cut cat, but also a roomier
boat with cabin space and head-room for seats and a proper dunny !! And I also want
a balanced lug rig for simplicity & user-friendliness. And it has to be rooly, rooly cheap.


Umming & ahhing about getting a TS16 plan-set anyway, simply because they are
so cheap. And you never know, if I have them, there's the faint possibility of doing
something about a TS anyway, simply because.... I have them. (just like i also have
plans for MIKs Eureka & PDR, and moderately useable Bolger plans in Payson's
New Instant Boats...

cheers
AJ

Howdy,

Cheap plans mean that people will buy the plans. Which is a first step toward getting the boat built I guess. But it not necessarily effective.

For example, Iain Oughtred's plans are relatively expensive, but they are marvellously detailed, so that a first time builder can create a rather good boat in every way. Light, pretty, efficient.

Now that experience is what sells plans that people will actually build boats from. Before I started designing I was working at Duckflat cutting up kits.

We sold plans from lots of different designers - Australia, USA, UK.

Anyway ... some plans we would get a million questions, which we were kinda happy about because the reluctance of existing boat materials suppliers to answer questions was our competitive advantage.

But what this means is without US those builders would never get the boat finished.

But with some plans people would disappear with them and a stack of materials and turn up with a boat at the end - happy as pigs in an influenza free world. Maybe one or two simple questions on the way through.

Oughtred's plans were like that. Also the plans in the strip planking canoe book Canoecraft, the early Guillemot, Payson/Bolger plans and a couple of others.

Guess which plans we preferred to sell after a while. Guess which designers are still around. And also guess whose plans I modelled mine after.

Even a $100 plan is so cheap compared to the cost of the boat ... it makes no difference. But it might just cover so much useful and interesting stuff that both the boat and your enthusiasm will grow together.

On the other side ... I was visiting Duckflat last week and some guy had a plan for a runabout that he had downloaded for free and wanted to know whether a particular inboard engine would be OK and where to put the modern, lighter and more powerful donk. The designer is long dead and we don't know anything about the boat - blank looks all around - sorry. Cheap plan though.

But cheap plans can work tremendously well if they are detailed enough and mass marketty enough.

MIK

Cheap plans. Hell, even Oughtred's plans are cheap compared to the overall cost of the boat.

I bought plans from a certain NZ designer because they were cheap, far cheaper than the Oughtred offerings which were my alternative at the time. Well, those plans were riddled with errors (the designer wasn't interested), the boat was only buildable using techniques I learned at boat building school (to get around all the design problems), the boat turned out hideously heavy (though inexperience on my part and too much poxy helped there) and while it works it's certainly not a fine performer. Cheap? Those plans turned out to be bloody expensive but by cripes they turned me into a better (more flexible) builder.

Incidentally, Hartley plans are cheap because they've been around for a long time, not because they are poor plans - I watched Glen build Rusty from Hartley plans and they seemed pretty good to me.

Richard