: When one considers the time and effort that go into a build it seems to me a
: false economy anyway not to buy a proper set of plans. ...

: I have built boats from book instructions, but only because the plans were no
: longer available to buy.

I built my first boat from the instructions and offsets in Nick's book
and found that little or no further information was needed (and most
questions could be answered by browsing this BBS). Full size plans
are not particularly useful if you intend to modify a published design
anyway - my Great Auk was scaled down by 5/6 for a very small paddler.
My Cormorant was also scaled slightly (by converting from inches to
millimetres at 1"->24mm) and the deck was stripped according to my
own design. Both boats worked out fine and I would imagine very few
people build their second or subsequent boat exactly according to
plans.

I would always enter sets of offsets into software to draw things out
(prior to even starting to modify things), so any unfairness or errors
would show up before any great effort or money was wasted.

If you were building a particularly complex boat by a designer that
published only plans and not a detailed book like Nick's, then perhaps
plans might be more necessary, but I know I would inevitably want to
make some changes to a design, so whilst the construction details that
came with the plans might be vital, the actual forms might well just
be so much wasted paper ...

Andy