: I have just pasted my plans onto the forms with wall paper paste. In hind
: sight I should have used spray on adhesive. They paper has wrinkled up and
: I am now concerned about the accuracy of the forms. Some measurements and
: calculations suggest they have all shrunk or stretched by roughly the same
: amount (0.5 - 1%), so I think I can ignore the problem and carry on. Am I
: being rash or should I start again?

Get a good ruler or yardstick and your table of offsets. Now that the plans are glued to the wood they are not going anywhere, and they should be easy to measure. Check the width and height along whatever centerline or alignment marks you can identify. If the plans have stretched then the glued-down paper will be slightly larger than it ought to be. If so, then mark inside the plans what the correct measurement ought to be. For example, if the forms are supposed to be 23 inches wide and your glued-down, stretched-out plans actually measure 23.25 inches (about a 1 % gain) then your plans are 1/4 inch wider than they ought to be. with a colored pencil make a mark half that amount on the inside edge of the cutting line on the plan. Measure the height. if it is supposed to be 14 inches and it comes up 14-1/8 inches (again about a 1% gain) then make your marks 1/16th of an inch inside of the line.

Now you have four marks on your plans, just inside the cutting lines. start at any one and work around to the the next one, placing marks inside the cutting line, basically redrawing the forms to the size they ought to be. The amount of error is probably very small and you cna eyeball this easily and sketch in the proper measure very quickly. The existing lines on the plans give you a great reference to work from.

When you cut out the plans you just cut on the inside of the printed plan lines, but not so far in that you cut past those marks you've made.

If the plans shrank from the use of your wall paper paste, then when you measure them you'll find that your proper marks will be outside the printed lines. Again, use a colored pencil to tick off marks in the proper place, and then, when you cut the forms be sure to cut outside your tick marks (and well outside the printed lines)

If you have plans that havenot yet been glued down, may I suggest you use some rubber cement. Sparingly. You just need some glue near the edge to be cut, and maybe ax X of glue at the center to hold it down.

another technique is to use rubber cement to glue the printed form shapes to mat board or cardboard (not corrugated cardboard) then tack this to your wood and cut out everything. You can later remove the cardboard from your forms and store it. This keeps the form designs flat, and makes it a snap to duplicate them if you need to. Just use the cardboard as a template and trace around it with a sharp pencil.

If your design only shows half forms, mounting them on light cardboard like this makes it easy. Just flip the cardboard template, line up the centerline and trace the edge to draw the other half of the boat.

Hope this helps.

PGJ

: Incidently, the bow and stern patterns
: remaining on the intact plan set appear to be around 1% smaller (ie up to
: 5mm on the middle forms)than the (now wrinkled) patterns on my forms. Is
: it that the patterns on the forms have stretched (I would have thought the
: wetting effect of the paste would have shrunk them), or could there have
: been variation in the plans in the first place, say due to the plan
: printing process?
: Any wise thoughts to help me sleep at night would be appreciated!