Hi Joe, you need to read "Lofting" by Alan Vaitses. You can probably find it at your local Public Library. The naval architect would provide lines drawings and offsets to the loftsman. The loftsman expanded the measurements to full scale in order to layout the boat project. I've stepped through some of the same processes just for fun. Here it is in a nutshell (I may have some details wrong).

The architect would typically start with a half-model. The model would then be sawn into sections - each section representing a station mold. The sections were traced and scaled. Offsets and line drawings were developed from the resulting data. The loftsman would be enlisted to make the offsets into a real boat - through the process known as "Lofting". He would use the offsets to draw the boat full scale in plan and profile - drawing-in each waterline and buttocks of the floor of the constuction loft. Errors in the lofting tables were common (and still are) and the loftsman used a batten to create fair lines in each (plan/profile) view. The station mold templates could then be derived directly from those two views.

I'm sure there are variations/subtelties I've missed but I did this for my last kayak and it was a lot of fun. I would encourage anyone interested in classic methods to go through with it. The compound curve you referred to does not really show; you can kind of imagine it though. The line drawing reads like a topo map - tight topo lines are the acute angles and open lines are more oblique surfaces.

I hope this helps.
www.ChipSandresky.com