Lines and Lofting

Lines and Lofting

A hull has almost no straight lines. How do you build a curve 200 feet long?

The half model. Shipwrights carve a wooden half-hull, then slice it to take its shape off.

The lines plan. Three views of the hull's curves: sections, waterlines, buttocks. Where they cross, they must agree. That is "fairing".

The mold loft. A huge, smooth floor where loftsmen draw the ship full size and make templates for every frame.

1940s. Liberty ships: templates, prefabrication and welding produce a ship in weeks.

1970s onward. Computer fairing and numerical lofting; the loft floor becomes a screen, and CNC plasma cuts the plates.

Try it. Bend a batten through the pins on the loft table. Find the fair curve with your eye.

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