Halsey spoke this evening at the Herreshoff Museum on the subject of his family. They were remarkably gifted, creative and exceedingly productive. I had stated many times; had the Herreshoffs had modern materials available they would have been even more remarkable. There are many aspects to the story. One that never ceases to amaze me is that there were never any line drawings. Captain Nat carved half models and then took offsets from them. Un like most archive libraries, which consist of drawings on paper; here the archive is 500 half models. Not quite as easy to store. Once the offsets were taken and written down, construction drawings were produced for construction, Capt Nat was available for any questions on the projects.
I once asked Olin Stephens if he had ever carved a model or considered this method instead of line drawings. His answer was no.
Captain Nat would have had a field day with a modern solid modeling computer program. He would have been able to create his virtual model and view it from any angle. He would have been able to add as well as subtract to the surface – interesting…
I wonder how much of his design was by feel versus by eye? I also wonder how much tweaking was done on the loft floor? It would be interesting to see how fair his models were?
Very cool. It was great fun to share some time with you in the model room! Thank you as always Steven. Bill