After weeks of trying to make space in the garage, I finally cleared an area to loft the 10ft Paul Gartside dinghy.

I laid down two layers of 12mm plywood, glued and screwed them together, and added a few coats of paint. Once dry, I set out the grid – with a little help from my little helper!

Snapping a blue chalked string line, gives a long straight datum line, and the grid of waterlines, buttock lines, and station lines is built up from there.

In order to get accurate perpendicular lines, a set of trammels or a beam compass is used. Being able to use Dad’s beam compass was a joy.

It’s a bit hard on the knees, so a kneeling pad or knee-pads are invaluable.

By the way, no shoes allowed!

Next, it’s time to make some battens from an 11 ft length of straight grained, knot-free wood.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon making a lot of shavings (!), to get the timber ‘faced and edged’ ready for ripping to 20mm wide battens. It was thirsty work, so a drink or two was in order, to celebrate progress made.

After a bicycle ride this morning, the thicknesser came into its own, and by lunchtime I had a selection of battens of varying thickness.

And now it’s time to put down some lines. Starting with the sheer line, I plotted the relevant points from the table of offsets, put some nails adjacent to my marks, and laid a batten around the nails.

Now, it is quite common that the coordinates set out in the table of offsets, don’t always form a curve that is ‘fair’ (no humps or straights, just smooth and … fair). However, I was a little surprised that the batten did not lie nicely against two of the seven nails – especially so, as the table of offsets notes that the sheer line were amended in 2005. Anyway, I think that I have a nice ‘fair’ sheer line – a good start.

And those ducks? Well, lofting ducks, or spline weights, were traditionally used for lofting as the picture below shows. They look like whales rather than ducks. Those weights on the loft floor (that used to be my Father’s) don’t look like ducks either, but they will fulfil the same purpose.