Need help with moulds

[Dan Lindberg]

Hi Bob,



Mike,

The baseline, (or strongback line) is just a reference line included on the drawings to show at what height the strongback is.
It can be anything/anywhere as long as the canoe shear misses the strongback. Moores likes to have it high (farther from the bottom of the canoe) so that any length canoe can be built above the strongback (and the strongback built lower to account for this).

But it must be at the same relative location on each station and end form, otherwise you'll get a "crooked" canoe.

I'm not sure what your fix will be, but, be sure you understand what's happening before you cut wood. Adding (screw/nail/glue) or removing pieces from the stations doesn't hurt anything, as long as everything is lined up correctly.

Ideally, you will have a verticle line and a horizontal line at the reference point on each station, along with the shear line locations. When lining up the
stations, you should be able to site down the "canoe" and see these lines all in alignment.

Dan

 

[mferraguti]

Dan,

With everyone's help here, I think I figured it out. But Canoecraft can be confusing, if only to me. Now that I have offsets plotted to the common baseline, some of these forms will be in excess of 24", width and heigth. What's odd about this is Canoecraft suggests to take a 4' x 8' board and cut it in half, doubling it. But, I would run out of wood on some of the molds. For example, the middle mold is roughly 34" wide x 27" high. Maybe I'm just dense. Also, the last mold (mold #7 for chestnut prospector), isn't wide enough to connect to the 5" vertical line (5" right of centerline) that Moores says to connect to horizontally, then going up to the common baseline. What does one do with that station? I'll tell you what though, I'll figure this out sooner or later. I just read that there were many typos in Canoecraft's offsets. Just what I needed to read!

Mike

 

[mferraguti]

One last thing . . . I do appreciate you guys hanging in there with me. Bob, Mike, Dan, thanks so much. You haven't heard the last from me.

Mike F.

 

[jackbat]

I think I can help

Hello Mike,

I have a 50 page book on building the prospector that I give to customers that buy the video and plans. I am happy to let you have the book if you email me at the address below. Unfortunately lofting is covered on the first DVD in the series but there are a bunch of pictures in the book of the prospector being built. It shows the forms on the strongback and how they should look with the sheerline and profile lines.

The Profile in a lofting table is the distance from the strongback to the very bottom of the hull at any given point. The baseline, or in the case of a canoe the strongback line never (and I mean never) changes from form to form.

As a matter of fact, the prospector is the first canoe I ever built in 1982 when I was living in Alaska and I needed a hobby to get me through the dark winter. I used that canoe to run some great rivers in Alaska and Canada.

There is a picture of a finished Prospector on my web site in case you have not seen one.


Jack@sandypointboatworks.com

 

[Dan Lindberg]

Mike,

Yes, that's why I "lower" the baseline, so the forms are smaller and use less plywood.

And it might be a bit late now but, this is why on the canoes I've built, I bought full size plans, just to avoid the transfering from offsets to line drawings and the chance for errors that includes. Also, hopefully the lines have/had been "faired" on the computer by the supplier of the plans.

Good luck,
Dan