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Most boatbuilding books have good sections on lofting which are perfectly adequate to
learn the basics. However your reviewer has been involved with lofting off and on since
the age of four when his job was to hold sharp pencils for his father, and treasures his
copy of this book for the tremendous amount of material in here which appears nowhere
else. Since the author did a good deal of large ship and aircraft lofting, the book is
especially strong on metal work. In fact your reviewer has never seen the methods for
laying out full sized flat patterns for metal and plywood correctly described for complex
developed surfaces anywhere except this book and a chapter in another book which was
written by the same author. At the time it was written in 1941, this was the last word in lofting. At the time there was probably nothing that it would make sense to add. Today if the book was to be written from scratch the only thing that one would probably add would be a discussion of the use of B-Spline curves and the NURBS surfaces derived from them in on screen design and lofting today. Even for those who will only do manual lofting, these concepts make it easier to understand the concept and construction of "fair" curves and surfaces. The serious student of lofting can be a full master of the fascinating profession of loftsman if he or she has thoroughly studied this book, plus studied the functions of the Rhino NURBS based CAD program either through the manuals which come with the program or through the courses provided by Yacht Design School. (tm) (Sent as PDF file) |