More Hartley

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings and Salutations all!

Let me introduce myself as a long time lurker and occasional bilge participant with absolutely zero boatbuilding experience. Just to clear all questions about my boatbuilding capabilities.

But I have built a hollow wood surfboard!

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Good looking, but a log to ride. It did keep me riding while ding repair was being applied to my go to ride so it has value beyond the wall display it is currently providing.

Anyway, as a result of an epiphany decision I decided to build a sailboat. One that I could enjoy the build, afford the build and handle the build once we met in the water.

Lots of neat happenings went into this decision and I hope that you folks may inquire about as I tell the story. Just to provide a glimpse, while building the hollow wood surfboard in 1/2 of the garage, I had a visit from my future son-in-law. Warm evening, working with cedar, Dead on the victrola with a single malt nearby and he asks for our daughter's hand in marriage and tells me why he is the one. Wow.

Anyway, time flies and as a result of a lot of sunspots on our journey, we end up in San Antonio TX. Fantastic culture, great food, wonderful Mariachi bands and absolutely no surf to be found. Modified surfboard design to paddle board status and tried to find CNC contractors who could cut me 5 boards of ribs for a conceptual production run. Met some great craftsman, but all unable to make it work.

So, lets build a sailboat!

Again, lots skimmed over regarding details to get to this point, maybe they will come up in the future.

So the story starts in SAT with my promise to restrain occupancy to 1/2 of the garage.

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More to follow, please excuse my intermittent posting, lack of detail and terms, and persistent lack of accountability.

Enjoy,

Eric

[WX]

Watch this space eh?
Welcome.

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

So there I am in SAT and am looking for Doug Fir for the frame of this little plywood sailboat. Not an easy adventure. But I finally found a place that had some...at $25/bf!

Wowser! This stuff was recycled, about 25 rings/inch, would make a great guitar face, but was completely unusable for a sailboat. But I did finally find some Southern Yellow Pine and brought out the plans and tools!

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[Rich Jones]

I'll be following!

[FishoutaFlorida]

I hope that it is worth it Rich.

One thing that I didn't discuss earlier was how I chose a Hartley.

After deciding that sailboat building was going to be my next project, which boat would I build? A sloop? cat? Perhaps a Yawl? Well not knowing how to sail and my sailing experience being an afternoon with a hobie cat, a 51' Beneteau in Cabo and a lot of reading, I didn't have too many requirements:

1. needs to fit in my garage,
2. needs to live on a trailer,
3. needs to be built of wood,
4. needs to have a little cubby,
5. needs to have a history of service.

So I looked at D5's, Melonseed, and even a puddle duck. But I liked the looks of the Hartley, loved the long history, not too sure about plywood construction and a long life, but all in all, the Hartley 14' trailer sailer was the one for me. Then I started to look for stories of building Hartley's, found several, but this one by Geary was what really helped me out. But that Melonseed looks like a fun build too.

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...hlight=hartley

I read this several times, copied construction photo's, and thoroughly enjoyed his working out all of the challenges that he came across. After reading of his troubles obtaining Hartley 14' Trailer Sailer plans from NZ, I sent my money to ClarkCraft.com and got them a week later. I spent a lot of time reading the plans and working things through in my head and got super confused. But after reading Geary's posts, I came to realize that the Hartley plans were more of a suggestion than a rule. Once I got that clear, everything became clear, time to start building!

More later,

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Absolutely WX, but be sure to read my last sentence in #1.

And thanks for the welcome, it took quite awhile to get my gumption going for this.

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

So in the name of "transparency" which used to be called truth, I need to share some facts with all of you.

I started this build in 2015 plus or minus, decided early that I would start a thread on this build at some point in time but didn't have a precise schedule for it. The build started in SAT, finished frames but believing that a change in work locations was looming I bundled the frames together and waited for the moving van. As predicted, job changes, location changes and we head west for Redondo Beach.

After settling in and making sure that I could abide by my 1/2 garage commitment, I built a building stock and re-started the build.

But lets start at the beginning.

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Using bum wad to copy the full size prints to the wood, I was able to pick and choose grain orientation and mark out frame pieces. Cut all of the pieces at one time (actually several days worth of cutting) and stored them together. Tried to cut close but on the outside. Since I am writing this portion from the future, one thing that I was concerned about did indeed come back to bite me. The cut outs for the stringers in the frame were cut at this time in my build. Better way to cut them would be to mark both sides of the frame pieces and then cut after mounting in the building stock which would allow you to account for bevel of the stringers when you make the cut in the frames. Need to account for the frame width on the cuts.
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Back to present tense. There were a lot of pieces to cut and I was up for the task.

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Now it's time to assemble the frames.

Funny how repetitive tasks with wood can while away the hours...

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

From the photo's in my last post you can see that I used bum wad to transfer the full size plans to the wood. Spent quite a bit of time selecting the right wood for the right part, at least as I saw it at the time. After cutting up the pieces of the frames it was time to put them together. So I built a table, put the full size plans on and covered them with saran wrap, used wax paper as an additional protector of the plans.

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One thing that I wondered about was the bevel of the notches in the frames for chines and stringers. But that didn't keep me from cutting them straight.

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This proved to be a problem when it came time to install chines and stringer.

OK, full disclosure, I started this project about 3 years ago in SAT, since then we have moved to Redondo Beach. Still not finished, but wanted to get this underway and catch up.

The problem that I brought on myself was in the forward frames, the angle of the chines was not a 90 degree and now I have to figure out a way to fix it through a backdoor. What I should have done is to mark the frames and wait to cut them until the frames where set in the building stock and measured the angle. Note to self, next time I think I should dig deeper...do it.

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Enjoy,

Eric

[Ando56]

I'm very close to finishing my Hartley 18. Started with zero experience and learnt heaps along the way. You will enjoy the experience. Good luck.

[FishoutaFlorida]

Thanks Ando, I appreciate your good wishes!

How long till you splash yours?

[asrainox]

i built a hartley ts16 as my first build - was good!

[FishoutaFlorida]

Hey asrainox!

Glad to hear that, wished I had a bigger garage, ts16 was my first choice.

OK, back to frame construction. Using the full size plans (thank you for that Hartley) I set about assembling frames from pieces cut earlier.

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Prep for epoxy glue mission. First time that I used whole wheat flour as thickener...very nice. Also want to comment on the use of 1:1 epoxy mixes, much less sensitive to measurement errors and has been working for me in a variety applications. No blush observed, but maybe I missed it. Got the epoxy from the same place as the plans.

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So now all of the basic frames have been completed. I chose to cover all with 1 coat of epoxy. future plans include all painted, no bright. Well may a bright transom if I find some spectacular wood.

But then again, this boat is not about spectacular wood, it's about getting me sailing in a reasonable time frame.

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Rasp doing it's job on the stem.

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Thanks Fred!

Glen-L was a huge source of information and dreaming material for me to get started. But now that I am building, WBF seems to be the best source of feedback for me.

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Enjoy,

Eric

[Ando56]

Thanks Ando, I appreciate your good wishes!

How long till you splash yours?

I'd like to say about 3 months but considering I started it 5 years ago thinking it would take me 2 - 3 years... who knows

[FishoutaFlorida]

Yeah I've got to believe that there is a reason that I'm not predicting dates...bad juju.

Lots of pieces to cut, this SYP seems to fairly similar to DF in strength so I'm happy about that substitution. Anyway, cut wide with a jig saw and work hard to get down to the line.

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oops.

Here is putting the plans together. They are full size 1/2 plan so I printed one as a mirror, taped them together and now had a full width of all of the frames.

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Wrapped it up in saran wrap, put beams behind it to take out the plywood bending and mounted it on my work table.

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Then it started getting messy.

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Frame assembly was to screw the frame pieces into place, make sure all fits well (trimming, sanding then gluing.

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Fun stuff! More later.

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

Just when you think that you've got it all figured out, you find out you don't. The company that I work for decided to not pursue aviation/airport development projects anymore So it's off to SoCal! Land of lots of work. Oh boy.

I had gotten a vibe that this was going to happen so I had stopped construction when I figured that a move was in the future. So I wrapped them up in shrink wrap and stuck them in the corner until the mover showed up. Took time to find a place to live, get settled, attend son's wedding, etc. before I started to find time to work on the Hartley. Middle of November 2017 to be specific. I'm getting closer to current in my catch-up story.

Building stock material!

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More to come.

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

I need to take this opportunity to acknowledge a couple of builders who were instrumental in my choice of the Hartley, brucemoffatt & Lars provided a huge hunk of history and soul of this boat, Geary gave me that "get it done" frame of mind and chrisb79 pushed me over the edge with regards to this thread. Muchas Gracias para tu motivación!

So here we are in South Bay creating a building stock for our dream ship. But first a couple of observations, I used the cheapest white pine at HD, but visually checked each and every piece. Then I wondered and worried about the garage floor which isn't level...How would I level the boat? Then I realized that the building stock had wheels and go anywhere I needed it to, so it needed to be square to itself. Moot point in my book, but probably against all known wisdom.

Anyway, here is the space available (actually the sawhorses are temporary), time to get going!

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All of a sudden the reality of what I'm doing, even though it's a small craft, is right in my face. I've got work to do!

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

So in I've built the majority of the building stock, but now need to add the bow to the main portion. Banking on the theory that the stock is square with itself and the garage floor is a flat plane on an unknown slope, time to finish it and start adding boat parts.

So I invert and add, hoping that my assumptions are valid.

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Just need to check the plans again. Measure once, cut twice...no that's not right. OK measure 4 times, pray and then cut. Got it. I'm learning...Lo intendo

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If I squint real hard...nope, not yet.

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I mounted the temp braces on the frames and then mounted to the stock. I set frame 1 and the transom first, strung a centerline string and then set the others with both the frame offsets and the centerline. Due to above assumptions, I used a square and not a level to set frames.

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Then repeated this process for each frame. In retrospect I think that my frame layout could be improved. I thought that I was getting a tight compliance with design, but...

Enjoy,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

Finally got all of the frames mounted on the building stock.

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add the stem.

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And now it's time to find the wood for chines/stringers. I spent a lot of time looking for wood in SAT and now I had a whole new search ahead of me. But every once in a while even a blind squirrel finds a nut, in my case it was Ganahl opening up their Southbay store. Was there on opening day and found all of the DF CVG that I needed.

Planing and scarfing to build the pieces that I need for the next step.

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The longest pieces that I need are just under 15'. With a Tonka Truck to ferry materials scarfing became a necessity. I read a lot about the task, but had to learn a lot to get even mediocre results. Definitely need more practice with this.

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More later.

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

OK then.

I had a wide variety of success or lack thereof on the scarfing efforts. Some good, some not so good. This was a trial run of two.

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Shows how bad a job on the glue control that I did. I thickened the epoxy with whole wheat flour but need get in there and scrape it off while it's still moving.

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If this passes my bend test, then it's good.

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I'm still working on a good method of cutting scarf's, this wasn't working so well. I was using a 7:1 ratio.

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So I kept on looking for other ways, because I've got a fair share of scarfing to do.

You know, if anyone has any questions, comments or whatever, please speak up. I don't bite!

More later,

Eric

[minuteman]

Looking good, Eric.

Congrats on landing in Redondo. If you must live in LA, the beach towns are the only way to go.

Kenny

[FishoutaFlorida]

Thanks Kenny,

You are absolutely right, South Bay is the place to be if you have to be around LA. I spend a lot of time on the commuter bus to get downtown for work, but its worth it.

With regard to scarfing, this idea worked fairly well. I used a clamp to get the pieces tight, then nailed the ends in place. Without them, ends were moving all over the place.

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While these cuts seemed to be ok, I still had issues later with making a good tight joint on some of these. I definitely used the wrong edge of the board for a guide. I also think I need a better gluing procedure.

Any thoughts on scarfing and getting consistently tight joints?

More later,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

Now that I've cut the scarfs, it's time to epoxy them together. I'm going to use a whole wheat flour as a thickener, and unlike in other similar situations, I didn't put a "primer" layer of epoxy (without thickener) on before the thickened epoxy.

Any thoughts on leaving out the "primer"?

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This system worked ok, but I'm still concerned about the clamping. So I tried another way...

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This didn't work very well, so I'll stick to the table.

Hope you folks are having fun out there!

More later,

Eric

[Hugh MacD]

Nice reporting! I've never tried scarfing without the primer coat so I'm watching with interest. I've also never used whole wheat as a thickener...just wood flour or or Cell-O=Fill (silica) powder. For the little bit I normally use I can afford it.

[schoonerjay]

Regarding scarfing, it appears several of the staves in post #23 have irregular tips, suggesting variably pitched angles across the face of the joint. You showed a different way of making scarfs in post #17 which end up looking pretty good (I couldn't tell if the bottom of the two boards got a divot on the edge) and this method would probably work well for making more scarf joints. I might suggest placing a sacrificial board underneath the bottommost scarf piece to prevent the feather edge from breaking. If you want consistent ratio scarfs every time using this method you could build an angled jig (Jim Ledger illustrates an excellent example in his catboat build - no clue what page to find it by now!). I see you've got hand and power planes, both could be used - rough the stock down with power, finesse with hand. Good luck!

[FishoutaFlorida]

Thanks Hugh,
I used the primer when I built the surfboard and that worked out great, was just a bit lazy when it came to the scarf joints. So far, on the joints that were done well my testing has shown the wood breaking, not the epoxy. But when I tested a poorly constructed joint all I got was a loud bang and splinters all over the place. I've used wood flour before and it worked well, but when I read about the whole wheat flour I basically stopped using the wood flour.

Now I've got several canisters of wood flour and not too sure what to do with them.

More later,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Thanks for the input schoonerjay! That's what I need to get better at this.

Yeah, in looking at that first photo in #23 I see that I'm not consistent with my cuts. With regard to putting a sacrificial board under the pieces, I remember that I did that in my first cuts (#22, 3rd photo), but curiously did not do that on later cuts. And the variable surface of my table was noticed in later cuts when I tried to clamp the boards down and some staves were not restrained. I think I'll get back to using that board again.

Thanks for reminding me about that angled jig that Jim L. used, I tried to replicate it (#20, last photo) but did not get the quality that I was hoping for. Just means that I need to re-read and re-build the jig.

Tough to equal the quality Jim L. gets, but perfect practice makes perfect, right?

More later,

Eric

[minuteman]

Hey Eric

This may be too late, but here's my scarf advice.

1. I see that you have a table saw. I build a jig sort of like this, except mine is a straight box with an adjustable slide on the bottom so that I can change the angle of the cut.

2. Before gluing line up the two pieces and make a mark so that you don't have to think while gluing.

3. I have a scarfing board - it's a super straight 2x8. I attached a guide to one side that I can clamp the two pieces to. This is to make sure that they glue up straight.

I never coat with unthickened epoxy before gluing and I never have a problem.

Kenny

[FishoutaFlorida]

Yo Kenny,

Never too late to get any kind of advice. Thanks for tossing yours in!!

Since you took the time to break down your comments, I'll do the same.

1. Yeah, actually I saw the jig link that you provided and tried to emulate it...

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I really missed the mark on this one. I never felt that what I was building was correct.

The real problem was that I was scarfing 12' pieces of wood and I had a 2' wide table saw. Tried sawhorses, shelves, but the wood was just too long to move straight through the blade with the jig.

2. Funny that you mention the alignment line. I had marked the pieces earlier for some unknown reason and when I went to glue up the most recent batch I noticed those lines. Really helped in the final product and I wish I had done this before. Thanks for the heads-up!

3. OK, I'm working on this one. Board attached to the jig? Your descriptions seem to be logical, but with my lack of success with the jig, I'm guessing that I'm missing out on this one. Help!

And to finish this off, thanks for the gluing info! When I built the hollow wood surfboard I used an unthickened coat of epoxy before laying glass fabric and putting several coats of epoxy over the glass. Unthickened pre-coating prevents bubbles from the wood messing up the epoxy and glass above it. But I just didn't see it as the right thing to do for a joint situation. Glad to hear about your experience.

Next task.

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Mo later,

Eric


Stay warm, I see that the NE will be getting a bomb cyclone. Duck!

[snaildrake]

Hey FoF,
if you want to rough cut your scarf tapers on that table saw, plan to finish them flat and square with a) a jack plane, b) a belt sander, c) sanding board, d) grinder, e) some other tool you like working with. Clamp on a flat surface so you can work to the feather edge. Plane was the easiest for me to get flat and square, but belt sander is good too.

-Dan

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings Dan!

Thanks for the tips! I'm thinking that I had a bad case of "get-home-itus" because I made the cut and skipped the flat and square stuff. In looking at the photo's you can see where some of the boards needed work to get square with the world.

I don't have too many more boards to scarf, but I do have some plywood scarfing coming up so I have plenty of opportunities to use your advice. Thanks again.

Back to the Hartley.

Time to install the stem. I built it when I built the frames, did some shaping and packed it away. When I first put it on, I realized that my installation of frames on the building stock may not have been spot on the design dimensions. So I did some carving, clamping and viola!

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Love to figure out clamping layouts. Not too much experience with them, but sure like setting it up. Inspired by some of the examples I see on this venue.

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Now I need to clean and shape this mess up.

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Photos of the stem sort of illustrate that I need to improve on holding laminating pieces together when I glue them up. If I take the time to cut the individual pieces as tight to the design as possible, why waste it with a sloppy glue job? Definitely accepting any advice on that item!

In this case I can solve the problem, but again I need to do it right the first time.

Oh the shame!

More later,

Eric

[Hugh MacD]

Looking good! Should be a fun build. I think for me I;ve had the best luck laminating first and then cutting my final piece out after it's cured. Glue once-cut once. That may be the lazy way, but it seems to work for me.

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings Hugh,

You had me at lazy way.

As I review what I did, I see how it could be improved. That is why I share my foibles here. It's amazing how my understanding of wood boat construction has increased with sharing this project. Thanks!

Next up, keelson.

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More later,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

Time to install the keelson, in this case it will be 2-5/8" thick boards laminated and screwed. I decided to do them one by one. Glue and clamp the first one, the do the same for the second. Follow up with drill and screw the whole thing into the bottom of the frames.

Here is the first stage, glue and clamp first board.

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Now hoping that I mixed enough epoxy.

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Clamp again, push it back in the corner and wait till next weekend and the next task.

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One thing that I wanted to mention and perhaps get some feedback on is that the bill of materials that accompanied the plans didn't seem to be based on the plans provided. I quickly gave up on that list and compiled my own from the plans. They provided width and depth, I measured the length on the frames as set on the building stock. 2 dimensional plans cannot provide 3 d measurements. That bill of materials may be useful at some point, but not so far.

Anyway, prior to getting to this point I had to spend a lot of time with the planer and the table saw to create these pieces.

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One of my smarter moves here was to do a lot of repetitious work creating the materials needed, before I needed them. Hartley 14 plans use a lot of non-standard production sizes so I spent a bit of time up front figuring cuts to economize my wood purchase. And then spent a bit of time working the wood to get what I needed. But it was sure nice to just pick up the stock needed and get on with it.

I need to figure out how to sharpen the planer.

More later,

Eric

[FishoutaFlorida]

Greetings all,

Time for a little transparency. Remember back in post #32 I was lamenting about the stem that I had built and got some great advice from Hugh.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

I later noticed that the stem had moved on the frame it was fit to.

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That is about an inch of solid air between the top of the stem and the bottom of Frame #1. Uh-oh.

After retiring to my groaning chair with a cup of anejo I pondered the situation. Perhaps it was just the anejo, but I couldn't escape a quote from Captain Barbossa..."more of a suggestion than a rule." So rather than do the right thing and cut the glued sides and reset in the right spot, I did another thing and cut some wood to fit and glued it in!

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Ooops. Now the frame is set high, the edges of the frame are fitting high, how will I deal with that when it is time to install plywood? On top of that, the precut notches of this frame are now too high. The errors keep adding up! And at the transom I had a problem with the keelson being in a notch that was cut too deep.

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I wonder if these boo boo's are random enough to cancel them out?

Fat chance on that.

Time for additional groaning time. I really don't want to go backwards and re-do these things.

My dad is the King of Rube Goldberg Solutions. As a kid, whenever I broke something, he would fix it as, well as Rube Goldberg would. Never got that brand new replacement toy! But I did get a great case of Rube Goldberg in my blood and now I'm a Prince of RG Solutions! The very thing that I didn't like long ago. Who would have thunk it?

More later,

Eric