: If any one has the plans for the Cape Charles #18
Colin,
I've got Nick's book and Ted Moore's book and can develop and plot full size section from offsets. All this requires is a ruler, square. pencil and a spline. And time. If you have the time there's no magic in using the offsets to develop plans. CLC, with which I have experience produces a very complete set of plans, several sheets for $50. I can't imagine that they are making a whole lot of money on each set, after all the costs are considered. Maybe they're not even breaking even. My grandmother was very proud of her prize chickens. When she passed away in 1940 my Dad sat down with his slide rule and calculated all the costs associated with egg production. My Mom says they ate a lot of chicken that winter.

Now for some of us there is pleasure in working up plans from offsets, others want to get on with a'building. If you fall into the latter class, just buy the plans. Because even at minimum wage, it don't pay to loft them yourself.

I'm currently lofting Killing's Endeavour 17 form the offsets in Moore's book. I don't know if I'll build it, but I am enjoying the exercise. I replaced my shareware CAD program with the $30 KeyCad, but prior to this project had only used it to do some quick drawings of a shed, so I was low on the curve with it. After about a hundred hours, I can now produce a section drawing in about five minutes. Accurate to one-hundreths of an inch. Of course, I had to develop a spread sheet to convert the feet-inches-eigths format to decimals and key in all the tables. A step not necessary with Nick's offsets.

I plot on an old Epsom large format dot matrix printer, which permits drawings up to 16" by 42". My work station is a home built 266mhz PII, with 128 meg. ram and a 19" monitor. All of which might cost me $600 to purchase today. With this I can produce accurate, repeatable "free" plans. But if my Dad were here he'd pull out that slide rule and show me how much they really cost me. Lucky you can't eat computer equipment.