Jim Conlin ) writes:
In my older edition of Canoecraft, what's provided is most of a conventional
table of offsets.
You do need to loft and fair the 'body plan', the sections through the boat
at seven or eight stations.

for stripper construction, the strips are so thin and flexibe, that you
need moulds no more than 1 ft apart. on a 16 ft canoe that means about 14
stations plus the stem moulds. since the hull is the same shape at both
ends you only have to draw half the moulds and them make duplicates for
the other end of the boat. you can draw all the half moulds on on sheet of
cardboard and check them against the diagram in the book for accuracy and
fairness before dissecting the cardboard to make plywood moulds. some
peopel have used cardboard moulds. when setting up the moulds on the
strongback the'll have to be checked again for fairness before planking. I
don't think that's called lofting. Lofting means checking all the lines in
the drawings against each other on a lifesize diagram of the boat. you'd
need a 16 ft roll of drawing of paper. they actually used to do that and
pin the drawing up on the wall or draw it on the floor. Its a good way of
cross checking for mistakes.

with so many moulds fairing is more accurate in stripper construction.
setting up is described in chapter 7 (I have the 1983 edition). Moores
does say to make sure the moulds are good and don't just borrow somone's
and use them without checking they're fair (ie will produce a
smooth-flowing hull without any bumps or sags in it).

there is a photo showing the moulds I made of the prospector in the book
on my website. look under Boats, Boat Designs, and 12 Foot Camping
Sailboat (I think that's what I called it). The one photos shows a
progression of moulds I did to model this boat and compare it with the
prospector from Moore's book.

You'll need a 2' x 2' sheet of plywood. Paint
it flat white. I didn't find whether the given offsets are to the outside or
the inside of the planking. I'd ask the author. If to the outside, you'll
need to deduct plank thickness when taking patterns for mold stations.
I wouldn't try to loft/fair the waterlines or buttocks. When fairing the
body plan, be aware of the relation between successive ststions. Rather. i'd
get out and erect the station molds, then using a planking strip or batten,
look for bumps and hollows in the 'setup'. These need to be trimmed or
shimmed.
Any book on lofting will cover this basic stuff. Chapelle's 'Boatbuilding'
is probably easiest to find.

sebastian wrote:

hi im planning on building a canoe. Specifically, I would like to
build the 16 foot 'prospector' from moore's 'canoecraft' book, but the
design is in the form of a lofting table.

naw, a lofting talbe is something you draw a full size 16 ft diagram of the
boat on. what you have in the book is a table of offsets which you use to
draw life size diagrams of the moulds.


I know there are many books out there on lofting, but i have found
them to be more convoluted and complex than i need for a simple little
symmetrical canoe.

right

The full size plans are available for purchase,
but I would I like learn how to loft. Can anynoe provide a brief
tutorial on how to loft canoe plans or maybe provide links to any
known web pages which *clearly* and as simply as possible methodically
describe how to loft -ideally canoes and specifically from the tables
in canoecraft- or other small simple boats?


just plot the points from the table of offsets. try a scaled down model
first. one inch instead of one foot will give you a 16 inch model. I put
the tables of offsets into a spreadsheet program and played around with
the scaling when I was looking at the canoe shape.

again, there are websites and other books on stripper construction you can
consult. we have a couple other authours besides Moores on stripper
construction in the Ottawa public library.

good luck.
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