Advanced lofting.

I was offered the opportunity to engage in an unusual lofting process. Our Victory class one design was being built with information from a battered set of plywood mould patterns from 1934, and some lovely old drawings of the same shapes. We have a copy of a construction drawing which is slightly distorted and therefore cannot be scaled from. But no lines drawing and no table of offsets. The vessel is to be built within 1/4 inch tolerance on certain dimensions in order to be ‘in class’. In an earlier post you will see that we have already built the backbone, but without any of the rabbet lines cut. However the college wanted the vessel lofted in order to establish correct angles for the rabbet line etc.

and to define the shape of eight floor timbers that they may all be cut on the bench.

It was an amazing thing to do, I led the process, working with student colleagues and on my own, it took me about three weeks. I learned that the plywood mould patterns were indeed sound. I was able to cut mould patterns of my own, lifting information directly from the lofting. I also designed the floor timbers and made bevel sticks for all of them.