Lofting with David

There are eighteen people on the boat building course but only 9 boats are being built due to the space restrictions in the BBA and because if all of us worked on our own boats without any help thy wouldn't be finished this side of 2013. So 9 people will project manage and work on the building of their own boat from materials they have purchased and the other 9 people (me included) will work on these boats and get to move around from boat to boat. The advantage of being transient is that I can experience as many different types of building techniques as possible and walk away with a more rounded experience and potentially a better chance of getting a job. I will miss out on owning a boat and will have not put the hours in to project manage a build but its all swings and roundabouts.

Lofting is when full scale drawings of the boat are produced on huge pieces of hard board. I worked with David to loft his 19'6" Caledonian Yawl which took the best part of a week and a bit. We lofted three different views of the boat on the same piece of hardboard- Profile (side on), Half Breadth (Birds eye view) and Body Plan (viewed from the bow/stern), after which the lines resembled spaghetti thrown at a wall, as Mike our instructor would say.

Pencils, rubbers, rulers of all sizes, lofting batons, wooden batons and quick clamps became very familiar to us as we used them to manipulate the table of offsets provided by the boat's designer. We plotted these points on our huge grid and drew lines that connected into what we thought were fair and would produce a good looking and functional boat.

We then used the lofting to take full scale measurements used to produce the plywood moulds around which the boat will be constructed. There were seven moulds in all and it was important that all of our lofting and mould measurements were exact. A quick way to transfer the shape of the moulds onto the plywood was to tap small nails on their sides into the lofted lines. The plywood is then laid on top and a after a few whacks with a mallet the imprints of the nail heads are left on the plywood. These imprints are then connected with a lofting baton and a pencil and the shape of the moulds can be cut out.

Doing this for over a week produced many furrowed browns and gasping yawns as we tried to soak up the information and work load. David and I worked well as a team with my drive and his considered thoughts and calculations. I cant wait to start building the boat for real and to see these lines become a tangible 3D form.