Lofting

Summer 2000

Lofting is the process when you draw the boat full size. You actually only draw half the boat, as both sides have mirrored curves. But we did it twice as water from this rainy summer destroyed the drawings.

I actually doesn't have any good pictures of this, as thin lines on big white painted boards don't photograph well.

The only picture worth publishing is the one describing how to pick up the lines on the plywood molds. You nail down nails with the head lying down and then put the plywood on top of it and walk on the plywood until the pattern is transferred to it.

The problem was most of our plywood was to dark to notice the small marks from the nails. One solution was to use thin particle board to make a pattern before making the mold.
But my mother came up with a better solution: painting the heads of the nails blue, and quickly, before the paint dried put on the plywood. I suppose that's what mothers are for! Except when they are fairing the rough sawn molds...

And then the molds were cut out of plywood and we marked the sides and copied the frame in a router for the other side of the hull.