> I suppose in reality, it could equal anything in between 7/8" and
> 1", but in general I think most folks interpret it as 1/16th. The
> batten will most likely tell the truth visually, when you get to that
> point in the lofting process. garland

No, i am not going to quote myself. This is from page 107 of Robert M.Steward's "Boatbuilding Manual" Fourth edition, copyright 1994

Steward says "To eliminate a multitude of fractional dimensions, it is customary to write offsets in feet-inches-eighths of inches. For example, 2-5-3 means two feet, five and three-eighths inches. (You will find that you will read them automatically once you have tried a few.) Some designers pride themselves on the accuracy of their lines and offsets, and read some dimensions to one-sixteenth of an inch; this is shown in the offset table by a plus sign or 1/2 after the 'eighth' numeral, thus we get 2-5-3+ or 2-5-7/16. One of these days metric offset tables will make life simpler than struggling with feet, inches, and all those 64 fractions of an inch."

So, the plus sign stands for an extra 16th of an inch.

Glad to help those who have struggled with this.

Paul G. Jacobson