: Thanks Mike and Bryan,

: The canoe itself is a winning 11 person war canoe, and the builder would like
: to use this shape as a starting point for future improvements.

: Problem is, the log is not stable and has already had some repairs.

: I am pretty close right now by taking station profiles with a disc marker on
: hardboard, transfered that with the same disc back to paper, folded the
: paper to average any differences, made half patterns from that, made lefts
: and rights of the half patterns, cut and taped those together to get full
: bow and full stern patterns. A 70% reduction gave us the length and width
: we desired for a double. If I cannot perfect the patterns, then I have to
: sand and tweak the stations during setup to get everything fair with test
: strips.

: What I was visualizing for a transfer to computer would be to scan the
: drawings onto a grid where it would give me all the points of intersection
: and show me the areas that are out of fair so corrections could be made. I
: have no CAD knowledge so I don't know if such a program exists or not. If
: something like this does exist it would save a lot of time. But something
: with a steep learning curve cancels the time savings and I would just
: continue the good old fashion way.

: Reg

I think for what you're used to, that you should just proceed as you were and make station accommodations to your practiced eye. However the disc approach, tho' elegant, is a 2 step process of which the 2nd step takes lots of time cutting out the hardbd profiles - so if you can get your hands on an old arm drafter or parallel rule, the whole process would be way quicker and direct with only one step. (i keep kicking myself as i saw a great arm drafter in a thrift store for $10 a few yrs ago)

as most mice now are optical and only need a flat surface, i think it would be interesting to take the depth and width at a station and then clip the mouse on the end of the drafter rule or parallel rule and just see what shape shows up in a CAD program. It would be most interesting to see what if there were vertical and horizontal difference or to see if the relative difference (if any) is consistent.

if there was consistency, then you could directly input into digital form. you would still have to organize the output and place the forms in relative virtual space, but a huge intitial digital step would have taken place.

at that stage, the overall shape from those forms would have to be faired and then new stations taken for the faired boat - and that is not a trivial job if you're going to try and do it first time..

(I don't know about delftship, but the related freeship 2.6 up to 2.97 imports background images fairly crudely (and with bugs) and aside from endpoints, rounded station shaping is indirect.)

and returning to the simplified hand approach - your 'fairing' will likely be by overlaying all the section/form profiles and redrawing those outa whack. To then get the 70% size (or any overall or differing horizontal to vertical proportion - bigger or smaller) just send the drawing to a print shop for them to reduce/adjust. This is a simple inexpensive procedure and wont cost much more that just the print itself.

if it was me, i'd order a 1/8 scale printout as well and make a model for your own personal record.

mick