Thanks Mike, and also to Mike, Bryan, Mick, Paul, and Prasad.
I really appreciate the collective wisdom from some the best on this board.

I will move forward in a couple of directions with this new info. My computer skills do not go much beyond email and this board, well with a few exceptions. So my plan is to make some reduced copies of what I have and make a model. While at Kinkos I will query about the possibility of scanning the drawings to create a file.

Anything that gets corrected on the model can be enlarged to improve the same station on the master plan. I like the tips from you and Mick to establish minimal stations, (ends and middle). I can then observe fairness as the additional stations get added.

I can see how all this would be easier with a little Delft or Freeship knowledge and I can see that will be in my near future but not now. Does it make sense to learn Freeship and then move into Delft, or should I purchase Delft immediately?

This project is with the local tribe and I am already learning much more than I can ever contribute.

Thanks to all for the priceless input. I will post progress updates.

Best,

Reg

: . . . someone posts here and says, "I have this problem, blah, blah,
: blah." Then someone else responds, "That's not your problem,
: this is your problem," and proceeds to offer an elaborate explanation
: of how to solve a different problem.

: Never-the-less, I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that tracing
: stations may not be the best way to get a good 70% version of the original
: canoe. I do think it would be a viable way to build an accurate replica
: (at any scale) of the original. There is a subtle, or maybe not-so-subtle,
: difference here, in that a replica is dimensionally identical, or at least
: proportional, to the original. Ted Moores has some thoughts on this,
: having faithfully reproduced all the fairing flaws of his original in his
: copy of that canoe.

: A bug in this process is that now that the stations are traced, it's
: necessary to go to the computer and some sort of CAD program, with which
: you are not familiar, in order to scale and fair the lines. I suspect that
: a fundamental problem at this point is that there is no numerical
: representation of any point along the station lines.

: So, how would I have done this? I would have leveled the big boat up on
: sawhorses, established baselines in three planes, broken out my laser
: level and started building a traditional table of offsets, with
: half-breadths along the waterlines and depths along the buttocks lines.
: The two-foot station spacing would probably work, although I'd be tempted
: to try a 3 foot or even a 4 foot spacing. The advantage this would give me
: is that I would have numbers that I could plug into a CAD program (which I
: wouldn't do) or numbers I could plot and loft and fair by hand at full
: scale, 70%, or an even smaller scale (which I would do).

: Reg-- I know this doesn't offer any real solutions to your immediate
: problems, but I wanted to throw it out there and let everyone think about
: it a bit. Also, it's a foggy, rainy day here, waiting for the remnants of
: hurricane Hannah to move through, so there's not a lot better to do that
: sit at the computer and type for a while!

: Respectfully,
: Mike Scarborough