On the Cunningham S&G, I decided I want to build a model first from balsa or something like that to get a feel for it since I've never built from a table of offsets before. (Plus, it'll look neat sitting on my desk at work, and remind me of better things and why I want to stay at my job when things get wiggy!)

So, I've started drawing the panels out in Adobe Illustrator. I set up my artboard to full size like the plywood panels will be, and started plotting the points according to the tables. That was fine. When I draw the curves to connect the points, I either have little (and I mean little as in 1-3mm) bumps, hills and valleys in a couple places IF I make the curve hit all the points. There are not many points, maybe three or so that are out of the fair curve, and I have double checked the position of these against the revised offsets from Sea Kayaker magazine.

My question is, is it more important to have fair curves or to hit the points? I have only drawn the side panel thus far, don't yet know if these small hills and valleys correspond to the bottom or deck panels yet. I remember on the panels in the kit from Waters Dancing, there were some funny areas that I thought odd but they all fit together well. On one place on the side panel, I can see where one of the "bumps" looks like the bow end of a depression or "step" where the skeg opening will be.

I could keep going to the model and find out, but figure I'd save some time and ask, what will happen if my curves aren't just so? Will I have gaps or overlaps when I try to join the panels?

I know drawing it in illustrator is not time-expedient, but I wanted to do it for an excercise in "getting to know the boat" and so I can just scale it down to whatever size is convenient for a model and print the patterns out on tabloid paper or whatever to spray glue to my model wood. Plus, I'll have a digital record of it, and I suppose I could have it output full size down at a drafting shop on an accurate plotter. Later I will likely want to be able to shrink the boat to 9' or something for my son also.

So how tedious do I need to be in hitting these points?

thanks!

TD