I tried putting the links in as images, sprinkled throughout the relevant text but shit wasn't working for me today. So, the images are all in a lump.
http://imgur.com/aNDJiBi
http://imgur.com/eK6ncRi
http://imgur.com/L0BPXlI
http://imgur.com/dMMdgao
http://imgur.com/33ZUPPP
http://imgur.com/jLkPiSY
http://imgur.com/gQQ1JKJ
http://imgur.com/cvVtCzR
http://imgur.com/OKBy1vB
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http://imgur.com/Af2kKFI
The last boat I built (with/for a friend) was in 1995. During that time I got a bunch of sailing related books. One in particular has a bunch of lines drawings with tables of offsets for traditional and historic boats of small size. The boat I built was a 16' Cape Cod Catboat. It was as massive AF and weighed at least a ton. It had 7/8 cypress planks on 1-1/2" oak ribs, a 5" wide keel made of oak. I'll post photos of that later.
Any way it was built like a brick shithouse and I thought it might be nicer to have a manageable boat that could launch from a beach and could sail or row. I preferred a sailing boat that could be rowed in a pinch rather than a rowing boat that you could throw a sail on.
The Chapelle book had several working boats that fit this bill, 3/8" planking on 1" ribs, 3"x4" keel, open with no deck, gaff rig. I put it on the back of my mind, but at one point carved a solid model of this Bermuda sloop because I liked the looks of it, but it isn't something I'd like to build full scale. I love how over-canvassed it is. So I made this thing and tried sailing it, but being solid the balance was off. I had to hollow out the inside and put in ballast. I didn't bother at the time. I am repainting it and sticking it on a display stand. Done.
I also thought about (and built a cardboard model of) a plywood "tack and tape" sailboat by Payson. 4 sheets of 1/4" marine ply, some fiberglass and varnish and you are good to go. Very nice, agile boats, that are not beautiful but not hideous either. I'm still debating, when I have time and money, which to build. The most likely to be completed and probably far cheaper to build would be the plywood one. Practical, not romantic.
That is still years off and I really need to reign in projects, especially big projects, until my house is fully sided. The addition I started 8 years ago has lost most of its tar paper and gives my lot a distinctly Appalachian feel in contrast to my neighbors neat as a pin houses and yards.
So, I am dicking around with making a 1:6 model in my spare time. I've gotten a far as lofting the lines for the model. Basically, you plot the offsets (measurements taken from the centerline and the baseline) to the size you intend to build - full scale or in my case 1:6. You do this because you need top check that all the dots are in the right places and the numbers in the table were accurately recorded. So you make a bunch of dots and then connect them using a flexible batten as a guide for your pencil. It is important that the line be fair, sometimes the points have to move a bit and sometimes they are out and out wrong.
To help hold the battens in place you can get one of your kids to draw the pencil line or hold the batten but sometimes that doesn't work out 100%. Enter "ducks" Lead weights that are laid out along the points of the curved line you want to scribe, the batten being wrapped around them. For lofting a big boat, the ducks can weigh several pounds and are probably iron. The ones I am making are 2 pounds of lead each.
Commercial ducks sometimes have a bent wire coming out of them, picture an angler fish, the bent wire is set at the point on the line, one duck for every point on the curve. They cost a stupid amount of money, like $45 each or something. Maybe they are bronze, but even still. who's got $500-$900 to shell out for crap like that? Not a boatbuilder that's for sure. Whatevs.
Since I want to make this fast and quick, fucking with casting a wire in place is out of the question, too fiddly. Drilling one in after the fact is out too because it would just spin, so I designed my ducks to have curved sides and one curved end, the other end coming to a point.
More later