Feedback on plans

Hi, I'm considering buying Bruce Roberts plans for the Tom Thumb 330 sailboat, and was hoping I could some feedback on the quality of the plans. I recently built a house from blueprints I bought online, and they weren't quite as complete as they could have been. I spent countless hours figuring out information that should have been on the prints. I don't want to run into that again if I can avoid it. I appreciate any feedback you can give me. Thanks.

Jason

 

Bruce Roberts sells hundreds of plans, including those for Tom Thumb, which I believe isn't his design, but he's licensed to sell them or they were public domain and he modified them to some degree. In either case his plans are detailed, though everyone does their plans differently. I would think his are better then average and I've seen better detailed sets, but I have not seen his Tom Thumb plans, though I have a few others. The best choice for you is to purchase study plans, which typically come off the top, of a full plan set price if you purchase them. This will give you a good idea of how much detail his plan set has.

 

The number sold is no indication of "quality" or completeness. You get what you pay for. Compared to other plans intended for amateur builders, BR's plans aren't very complete. You get reasonably good info on building the hull and deck, but little beyond that. It's up to you to figure out rigging, systems, and interior (beyond a basic arrangement). There are lots of problems, scantlings are generally rather light. Things like no minimum spar moments or rigging sizes, no running rigging info at all, no lights, plumbing, etc......

 

Chuck Neville presents a reasonably complete set of drawings (intended for professional construction) for a 47' trawler yacht on his website here......http://www.nevilleboats.com/design_package_1.htm

Note there are 27 drawings shown. I have the drawings for a BR designed 55' trawler yacht which consists of 10 drawings, some of which are generic details not pertaining to this specific vessel. Obviously the number of drawings has little to do with the amount of information presented but in general I'll say that Mr. Neville includes much more in each drawing than BR does. Mr. Neville's stock plan sets seem to be priced similar to those of BR's (half-price sale!), which are no longer cheap.

 

Thanks, Tad. That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. It seems that my plans have changed, though. It looks like I'm going to buy a sailboat now, and start building a yacht in a couple years. In the meantime, I'll be looking for the right plans to suit my needs.

 

Hi there Jason. I've not seen the Tom Thumb but have seen enough of other BR plans to fully concur with Tad. Some models come with no table of offsets just the full size frame patterns. Expect little or no fitout info beyond what is in the study plans. The amount of info included varies from one design to another. If you know what you're doing it's sufficient as you can figure out the missing info, a bit like with your house blueprints.