Boat Shop

Lofting, day 3 The lofting of the long lines is complete.  In the picture on the left you see the completed body plan and if you are looking carefully you will see the Butts drawn in profile near the bottom.  At the top of the lofting you will see the half breadth view of the Diagonals.  I place the Diagonals out of the way near the top because with a small boat, the lofting gets "busy" and the lines become numerous. I enjoy getting to the Butts and Diagonals because they represent the "Moment of Truth" in the lofting.  The Butt lines will be fair if all the body plan is also fair.  The same is true with the Diagonals.  In this lofting, the Diagonal points in the table of offsets were somewhat unreliable and were only used a fairing points.  Some were off as much as 1-2 inches and had to be disregarded.  Of course this fact only reinforces the lofting process in getting a nice fair hull. When examining the Butts for fairness, I did in fact see a "flat

At this point the lofting is moving along nicely.   The photo to the right shows the body plan complete.  Note the base line is defined by the 1 1/2" strip tacked to the base of the lofting.  This is a great help in butting your straight edge against while marking points on the lofting. At the top of the body plan you can see the sheer and waterlines drawn in Half Breadth view.  The remaining lines to put down are the Butts in the profile and to check the Diagonals by drawing them in a Half Breadth view. At this point, laying down the Butt lines will be done next and they will reveal the fairness of the body plan sections in the fore and aft direction.  Because the pram is small, there can be some unfairness in the the sections in the body plan that examining the butt lines will reveal.  If you see a bump or flat when you lay down the butt lines in half breadth view, carefully examine, that portion of the section line to determine the source of the unfairness. For me, o

This Blog is about boatbuilding and this is the beginning of the construction of a 10 ft. Herreshoff Pram.  I chose this plan for its simplicity and when built of well chosen materials will be a classic pram finished fancy with varnish.  I became aware of this pram while reading John Gardner's "Building Classic Craft", a book I have had for years and have enjoyed reading Mr. Gardner's descriptions of the many varied small craft and learning of their origins. The pram will be traditionally built with cedar lapstrake planking over steam bent oak frames.  This planking will likely be of Northern White Cedar which was traditionally used at the time these boats were built and in service in the Northeast part of the country in Herreshoff's period.  I haven't built a boat from descriptions and plans contained in an article previously but the plans look complete and offer detailed information of the boats construction thanks to the expertise of Mr. Gar