Lofting

Loftsmen at the mould lofts of shipyards were responsible for taking the dimensions and details from drawings and plans, and translating this information into templates, battens, ordinates, cutting sketches, profiles, margins and other data.

When aircraft design progressed beyond the stick-and-fabric boxes of its first decade of existence, the practice of lofting moved naturally into the aeronautical realm.

As the storm clouds of World War II gathered in Europe, a US aircraft company, North American Aviation, took the practice into the purely mathematical realm.

Generally, boat building books have a detailed description of the lofting process, beyond the scope of this article.

The first step is to layout the grid, mark the Base Line along the length of the paper or plywood sheet.