Lofting...I have to do what...?!?!?!?

So... just as an aside, when i start a sentence with "so", it's just a way of giving myself extra time to think before i have to write something down - kind of like written procrastination.

So, lofting...???...

So, I have a pile of 12 sheets of paper which will apparently magically turn into a sailboat...

To quote from The Unlikely Boatbuilder...

Lofting is the process of blowing up the relatively small-scale plans you get from your naval architect into full size plans.

This process is thought to be so complicated that many modern architects supply full-size plans to eliminate the need for lofting.

So, that's what lofting is...but how does one actually go about lofting?

Well in awesome related news, i was searching through the posts / conversations on the JWBuilders Yahoo Group for lofting advice and i found this message from John Welsford...

Lofting is not something that i expect my customers to do, i do that here, and scale the drawings off it.  The most you have to do is draw out a component from a scale drawing with baselines established and offsets shown.  Not hard work at all.

And in other "That's Brilliant" news, i've found some layouts showing how people have fitted all the "pieces" (so, my boat building lingo needs some work) of frame onto the 9mm and 12mm ply to minimise the number of sheets required.

So i think this evening i might go home and have a look at the plans in some detail and start to mentally prepare!