Course Duration: 2 days.
On our Lofting Theory course you will learn how to interpret designers’ drawings and tables of offsets to produce an accurate scaled down version of a full-size loft drawing. Partly theoretical in approach, you will also learn how to correct any minor design errors to ensure fair hull lines from which patterns and moulds could be taken.
Also available is a practical lofting course which can be tailored to suit the student’s needs. The practical version of the course takes designers’ drawings and develops them directly on the loft floor. You will learn how to make softwood patterns from which to construct a new boat. The length of this course is flexible depending on the complexity of the craft to be lofted. As such, please contact us to discuss fees and start dates.
Introduction
Today’s boat builder needs a wide variety of skills. You must understand the proper use of wood and G.R.P. (glass reinforced plastics), and must have an understanding of how engines, plumbing and electrics systems are installed. You must know how to cost your work. You must be aware of new technology and yet be able to repair or restore boats built fifty years ago or more.
Being able to build a boat beautifully is not enough. It may give tremendous self-satisfaction, however, at the end of the day, it must also lead to being able to provide reasonably comfortably for yourself and your family. It is for this reason that the IBTC, uniquely, ensures that its instructors are not only expert in their professions but also have real world proven, successful, experience in the boatbuilding business.
The IBTC Concept of Training Experience has shown that training opportunities limited to just two or three boats is totally insufficient – which is why the IBTC always has a wide variety of boats, both large and small, at different stages of construction at any one time. This ensures that there is always a boat available and at a stage which will enable trainees to build skills in a truly systematic and properly structured way. You do not have to wait for a boat to reach a certain stage of construction before you are able to move on, and you are always able to continue to the next stage of learning once you have satisfactorily completed each exercise. It is a very important concept of IBTC training that the boats built, repaired or restored as training exercises are only worked on whenever they present the opportunity for appropriately timed exercises for students. High standards of accuracy and finish are set from the start of each course. Our concept of training enables our students to cover and learn the wide range of skills in our training programme in the shortest time possible. It ensures, too, that by the end of their course, you will have the ability and confidence to build, repair or restore a boat. Almost all learning is through practical exercises, (learning by doing), with the essential knowledge element fed in by instructors at the relevant moment. This huge amount of practical experience is one of the many reasons why IBTC students remain head and shoulders above others.
