Starbright,
To accomplish adding the chine width I had to reloft from midship aft. It really wasn't that big of a deal. Same could be done for the bottom panels. When doing your layout on plywood it is pretty simple to nail a batten strip an inch out from the measurements given in the book and then bend it to the point midship that the bow begins to narrow and form up. See that the curve is fair and parallels the original curve you have drawn on the plywood and you should be good. No need to try and measure and get exact dimensions unless you are trying to build more than one. Just let the curve of the batten be your guide. Trace the batten, cut it out on the line and flip it over on a new sheet to cut the other side the same. stitch the bottom together and get it in position. Then for the chine, you can scribe the inside line of the chine off the edge of the bottom to give you a matching curve and then use the batten again to draw the outside line of the chine. As Brian has said several times, the objective here is to retain the bottom angle and shape. As long as you don't alter that, you should be good.
Although I understand the concept of increasing bouyancy by increasing bottom width, it also increases wetted surface. My objective in making it wider at the chine rather than the bottom panel was to not only to slightly increase bouyancy when at rest but slightly increase lift when running at speed which can potentially decreases wetted surface. Whether this will work or is just a figment of my imagination remains to be seen.
I suppose another method would be to create functional lifting strakes on the bottom but that gets pretty complicated.
My point here is that the 2" addition to the bottom is very easy in practice to accomplish if you want to do it as Brian proposed, it just requires one additional step to what I have done.
I don't think you will see much change in the couple of degrees the dory flare changes.
