Does anyone on the list understand design well enough to take the
lines off a 17'? Except Jerry, of course, who probably wouldn't want to
(and who no one should expect to) invest the time on a purely volunteer
basis.
Craig, I'm sure quite a few of us know how; it's more likely a matter of
so many things to do, so little time...
There are two components to it: collecting measurements, and actually making
the drawings from the measurements.
If you are feeling ambitious, there are a number of good books that describe
lines drawings and the significance
of waterlines, station sections, buttocks, and diagonals. I used to have
a copy of "Skene's Elements of Yacht
Design" by Francis Kinney until someone who borrowed it neglected to return
it. That's pretty good and understandable
for the layman, but there are others I'm sure. Probably your local library
could round one up for you to borrow.
In the early days of naval architecture, a model would be made to suit the
builder's eye (the bigger the better) and it
would be sliced not unlike a loaf of bread and the resulting slices measured
for laying out the frames. If you ever
get over to Ann Arbor, see if you can get a tour of the naval arch. facilities.
For a virtual tour, visit: http://www.engin.umich.edu/dept/name/
There is a model shop and associated laboratories and towing tank on the
main campus and classrooms and stuff on the
north campus. The towing tank is pretty large, 360' long and with a several-ton
carriage that rides on rails that actually
have a curve in them (to match the earth's curvature). Some of the models
that they make there are over 20' long.
On the North Campus, there was a drafting room full of drafting tables and
carts laden with lead "ducks". A beautiful
velvet-lined oak box of Copenhagen Ship's Curves could be checked out. I
expect those are mostly gone, replaced by
computers. The walls were lined with half-hulls of all sorts, some yachts,
mostly ships.
The model shop consists of the wood shop and the machine shop. Models are
made bread-and-butter style of one
inch thick clear sugar pine lifts. The lifts are rough-cut on a band saw
to approximate the waterlines. After they
are all stacked and glued with the hull upside down on a specially made precisely
flat table, the corners on the lifts
are cut off with a handheld power plane. Then the hull is shaped carefully
at each station with a spokeshave and
checked with a template. After the hull is shaped at each station, the hull
is faired between stations. It is a lot of
work but the master craftsmen they have there make it look quick and easy.
There are racks of hundreds
of all sorts of clamps and strongbacks. In short, it's a boatbuilder's heaven.
The machine shop includes a cabinet with all sorts of propellers on pegs.
These propellers are all scale models of
propellors you would see on ships. Some of them have all sorts of odd rake
and skew, some with 5 or 7 blades, very
different from what we have on our outboards. Each propeller is worth several
thousand dollars.
Then there's electronic testing equipment out the wah-zoo.
Every now and then they get more models than they can store. There are some
people who probably have very
interesting coffee tables in their living rooms! I managed to only lay claim
to a seven foot fiberglass mold that
was used to make a model of a sailboat, "Golden Daisy", which was an epoxy/wood
boat that won the Canada's Cup
back in the late 70's I believe.