Lofting???

This may be a stupid question, but I'm wondering why, if I have the drawings to a boat, instead of lofting them to size why can I not just have the prints enlarged to the proper dimensions?

Can I do this?

Thanks, and sorry if this is a dumb question.

 

If you don't know the answer, it's only stupid if you don't ask.

Enlarging prints, especially to full size isn't practical, first of all, but more importantly a thin pen line becomes a 2 x 4 thick mark at full scale, making it near imposable to get accurate results. Then there is lens distortion if photographic methods of enlargement are used or just plane finding an ink jet that can produce plans to scale. My printer has a 24" width, but no length limit. This would be considered a larger format printer, which most folks don't have. Architectural firms will have these large format printers, as will sign makers, so I guess calling one of them is worth a shot. They'll need the plans on disk or will have to convert the information.

Tilling sheets of paper together is problematic at best. Paper has a grain, just like wood and it stretches as it goes through machines, picks up or loses moisture content, etc. which also tend to distort tiled images. In fact paper isn't very reliable for really accurate scale drawings. Vellum is better, but still can move a bit with humidity. Mylar is quite stable, but costly. The last set of Mylar station molds I ran off, cost me a couple of grand.

Lofting isn't as hard as it first seems and is the finest way to get to know your project. You will get to a level of intimacy with the shapes in the hull, that you'll easily be able to identify pieces from seeing just a small corner exposed. This level of shape understanding is very important and time honored, don't discount it until you've lofted a few boats. Another benefit is the ability to go back to your lofting and make full size templates, with fine accuracy, which doesn't require you crawl around in the belly of the beast with a tape measure, pad, pen and a flashlight.

 

You can have frames or stations plottet in full scale on mylar (plastic film that doesn't shrink), but the cost is almost the same as having the frames cut on a cnc laser or router.