Tracking the Elusive Tracing Paper

[Veeduber]

Got a call the other night from a total stranger who identified himself as a
fellow resident of northern San Diego county and a homebuilder, too, although
he lives up near the Pala Indian reservation which puts him even farther out in
the sticks than me.

He's trying to track down some tracing paper. He's apologizing fifteen to the
dozen but he's not a draughtsman and he's bought these plans for a thang called
an RW-20 and he'd like to try making some ribs but the rib drawing spans two
pages and he's never done this sort of thing before and he feels really silly
about calling me because a minor detail like tracing the rib drawing has blown
him right out of the water before he's even gotten started. Help?

I was smiling. (Okay, I was laughing my ass off.) But I know what he was
going through. The mere idea of building an "AIRPLANE" in capital letters with
quotes around it. And the fact all the experts say to TRACE the drawing so as
not to destroy the ORIGINAL, as if ten years from now some inspector was going
to insist on seeing the ORIGINAL drawing and would chop off your head if you
couldn't produce it.

"Grocery store," I told him. "Baking section. Look for ‘parchment paper.'
Use a new Sharpie ink pencil."

High Stammer burbled out of the telephone.

"Regular pencil won't work because the paper is treated with some sort of
anti-stick stuff but a Sharpie works fine. Or you can use waxed paper. Waxed
paper makes great tracing paper but nowadays most folks don't carry those
narrow-lead wax pencils you need to write on the stuff. Ink pencils work fine
on waxed paper but you have to clean the tip now and then."

The phone is gurgling... never thought... never realized.... never dreamed of
using...

"Or you could just drop by the shop and borrow my rib jig. It's for the RW-19
but the dash-twenty uses the same airfoil. That is, if you're using
five-sixteenths stock. If you're making the ultralight wing with the
quarter-inch stock, it won't work.. I think I've still got the router
templates for the nose rib around here somewhere too. Hello?"

The phone had gone ominously silent. Then a lady came on the line. "Who is
this?" she demanded. "And what have you done to my husband?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Truth is, I haven't used real tracing paper since the late 1950's when it was
replaced by frosted acetate and later by frosted Mylar. And I haven't done any
T-square drafting since I stumbled upon a copy of DeltaCAD on the remand table
at the CompUSA store in Escondido. Nine bux. Cheep.

DeltaCAD is a soopersimple 2D drafting program just a tad above a T-square &
triangle and at least as easy to use. Now I do all of my lay-out work inside
the computer. That means I get to make all of my mistakes on the display
screen instead of on metal. Ditto for rib drawings - - or any other part of
the airframe. I have to get it into the computer to begin with but that's an
arm-chair sorta chore, something you do in increments whenever you have a
little spare time.

But lotsa folks still copy the drawing of a rib onto tracing paper using a good
old fashioned #2 yaller pencil. This message is mostly for them.

If you've got a bright enough light you'll find that plain white shelf-lining
paper works perfectly well to make a tracing. Sliding glass door makes a
pretty good light-table. Bounce sunlight against the back of your drawing, you
can even use brown wrapping paper.

-R.S.Hoover

PS - I wasn't foolin' about the rib jig. Roger Mann, the designer of the
RW-19/20 (the -20 is a two-place with SBS seating; the -19 has a narrower
fuselage with tandem seating) uses a very interesting wing with a fixed slat
and Junker-type ailerons as well as an ingenious long-travel oleo-pneumatic
landing gear strut made out of the front forks of an off-road motorcycle.
Innovations of this sort are of interest to me so I bought a set of his plans
and studied them, going so far as to make a short practice wing using his
airfoil, strapped it to the top of my 1965 VW bus and ran it up & down Highway
395 to see how it worked. Which was good, except for that nice man from the
California Highway Patrol... who eventually let me off with a warning.

[jls]

Hey, VeeDubya, what about it? Nice. Homebuilding stuff amid all the
'lectioneering and trolls. Thanks.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Veeduber" >
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.homebuilt
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 3:34 PM
Subject: Tracking the Elusive Tracing Paper
[...]

[guynoir]

I've been doing a lot of reverse engineering using Deltacad. I scan a
1963-vintage mylar drawing and then paste it full size into Deltacad,
then I can trace directly over the image. I've done drawings 13 feet
long and 5 feet wide that way (these are Sikorsky S-64 parts). I can
use Deltacad to adjust the scale of the image in x and y directions to
get within .020 across a 12 foot drawing, but I have to use an image
editor to take any warpage, skew etc. out of the image.

Once I get a usable 2d vector drawing, I can import it into a modeling
program and design tooling, flat patterns, 3d parts, etc. Deltacad
works much better than the automatic vectorizing program I was using before.

Another thing I really like about Deltacad is the great flexibility and
ease of printing drawings on a large format plotter (or any printer for
that matter). The Oshkosh satellite photo posted here a couple weeks
ago happened to be a really high resolution image. I copied it into
Deltacad and printed it out on 42" wide photo paper. It looks really
nice thumb tacked to the wall.

I used the demo version for about a year before I sprung $50 for the
non-watermark version.

For me, Deltacad is the ultimate tracing paper.


--
John Kimmel


I think it will be quiet around here now. So long.

[Richard Lamb]

guynoir wrote:
>
> I've been doing a lot of reverse engineering using Deltacad. I scan a
> 1963-vintage mylar drawing and then paste it full size into Deltacad,
> then I can trace directly over the image. I've done drawings 13 feet
> long and 5 feet wide that way (these are Sikorsky S-64 parts). I can
> use Deltacad to adjust the scale of the image in x and y directions to
> get within .020 across a 12 foot drawing, but I have to use an image
> editor to take any warpage, skew etc. out of the image.
>
> Once I get a usable 2d vector drawing, I can import it into a modeling
> program and design tooling, flat patterns, 3d parts, etc. Deltacad
> works much better than the automatic vectorizing program I was using before.
>
> Another thing I really like about Deltacad is the great flexibility and
> ease of printing drawings on a large format plotter (or any printer for
> that matter). The Oshkosh satellite photo posted here a couple weeks
> ago happened to be a really high resolution image. I copied it into
> Deltacad and printed it out on 42" wide photo paper. It looks really
> nice thumb tacked to the wall.
>
> I used the demo version for about a year before I sprung $50 for the
> non-watermark version.
>
> For me, Deltacad is the ultimate tracing paper.
>
> --
> John Kimmel
>
>
> I think it will be quiet around here now. So long.


I WANT YOUR PRINTER !

[Wright1902Glider]

Where can I get me one of them DeltaCAD thingies? How much comp. power does it
take to run right?

Still scribbling on the brown paper covering the workbench,

Harry Frey
Wright gliders n' stuff

[Stan Premo]

Try http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,2154,00.asp
"Wright1902Glider" > wrote in message
...
> Where can I get me one of them DeltaCAD thingies? How much comp. power
does it
> take to run right?
>
> Still scribbling on the brown paper covering the workbench,
>
> Harry Frey
> Wright gliders n' stuff

[Veeduber]

>
>Where can I get me one of them DeltaCAD thingies? How much comp. power does
>it
>take to run right?
>

-------------------------------------------

It is marketed by Midnight Software. They have a web site and offer a free
trial copy (time crippled; it turns itself off after 30 days). The software
requires very little in the way of memory or computer power and will run on
virtually any windows system.

Most designers and builders of homebuilt aircraft have found DeltaCAD to be far
more practical than the more sophisticated 3D CAD programs since our main
interest is building real airplanes rather than making pretty pictures of them
:-)

-R.S.Hoover

[Russell Kent]

John Kimmel (aka "guynoir") wrote:
> I've been doing a lot of reverse engineering using Deltacad. I scan a
> 1963-vintage mylar drawing and then paste it full size into Deltacad,
> then I can trace directly over the image. I've done drawings 13 feet
> long and 5 feet wide that way (these are Sikorsky S-64 parts).
..
.. <snip>
..
> The Oshkosh satellite photo posted here a couple weeks
> ago happened to be a really high resolution image. I copied it into
> Deltacad and printed it out on 42" wide photo paper. It looks really
> nice thumb tacked to the wall.

Richard Lamb responded:
> I WANT YOUR PRINTER !

Screw that. I want his flatbed scanner! :-)

Russell Kent

[John Kimmel]

Sometimes my 42" plotter isn't wide enough and I have to print out
additional pages and tape them together. But usually it's wide enough.

Richard Lamb wrote:
> guynoir wrote:
>
>>The scanner I use is a quite reasonably priced HP "Scanjet 4670". Less
>>than $200. I can pick up the scanner unit and place it anywhere on any
>>size drawing I want, do a one button scan, move the scanner over, do
>>another scan and so on. This way I can scan a drawing of any size and
>>then use imaging software to splice all the scans together. If I want
>>to take the time. Probably takes half an hour to scan and stitch a
>>typical d size sheet. That's why we farm out all our big scans to
>>various local and not so local scanning services.
>>
>>One other thing about the demo version of Deltacad: To keep using it
>>after the 30 day trial period, just re-load it. I extended my "trial
>>period" to over a year.
>>
>>>Screw that. I want his flatbed scanner! :-)
>>>
>>>Russell Kent
>>>
>>>
>>
>>--
>>John Kimmel

>>
>>I think it will be quiet around here now. So long.
>
>
>
> And we gonna piece the print outs together with taps?
>
> I guess I'll stick with my old Epson FX's.

--
John Kimmel


"Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum." - When you have
their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

[guynoir]

The scanner I use is a quite reasonably priced HP "Scanjet 4670". Less
than $200. I can pick up the scanner unit and place it anywhere on any
size drawing I want, do a one button scan, move the scanner over, do
another scan and so on. This way I can scan a drawing of any size and
then use imaging software to splice all the scans together. If I want
to take the time. Probably takes half an hour to scan and stitch a
typical d size sheet. That's why we farm out all our big scans to
various local and not so local scanning services.

One other thing about the demo version of Deltacad: To keep using it
after the 30 day trial period, just re-load it. I extended my "trial
period" to over a year.
>
> Screw that. I want his flatbed scanner! :-)
>
> Russell Kent
>
>

--
John Kimmel


I think it will be quiet around here now. So long.

[Richard Lamb]

guynoir wrote:
>
> The scanner I use is a quite reasonably priced HP "Scanjet 4670". Less
> than $200. I can pick up the scanner unit and place it anywhere on any
> size drawing I want, do a one button scan, move the scanner over, do
> another scan and so on. This way I can scan a drawing of any size and
> then use imaging software to splice all the scans together. If I want
> to take the time. Probably takes half an hour to scan and stitch a
> typical d size sheet. That's why we farm out all our big scans to
> various local and not so local scanning services.
>
> One other thing about the demo version of Deltacad: To keep using it
> after the 30 day trial period, just re-load it. I extended my "trial
> period" to over a year.
> >
> > Screw that. I want his flatbed scanner! :-)
> >
> > Russell Kent
> >
> >
>
> --
> John Kimmel
>
>
> I think it will be quiet around here now. So long.


And we gonna piece the print outs together with taps?

I guess I'll stick with my old Epson FX's.

[Robert Bonomi]

In article >,
Veeduber > wrote:
[[.. munch ..]]
> strapped it to the top of my 1965 VW bus and ran it up & down Highway
>395 to see how it worked. Which was good, except for that nice man from the
>California Highway Patrol... who eventually let me off with a warning.

I can just _imagine_ that conversation!

Has to rival one I had when I went through a radar speed trap at an
excessive speed, _on_a_bicycle_. Long, *long*, time ago -- and, at that
time, in that place, the speed limit statutes applied to *motor* vehicles
only. It was apparently a slow afternoon for law-enforcement, and fairly
shortly there was a 'committee meeting' of what seemed to be _most_ of
the cops for that side of town. _Spirited_ discussion regarding what *could*
I be cited for, if they were of a mind to do so. Even 'reckless driving'
turned out to be a 'motor vehicle'(only) offense. Something like 30 minutes
later, with more than a dozen officers 'on scene', including 2 sargents,
and a lieutenant, nobody had been able to find anything that 'fit the crime'.
Note: I'd been 'free to go' since shortly after the 1st additional officer
showed up on the scene, but it the whole thing was _good_ entertainment, so
I stuck around to watch the show. <grin>

[Blueskies]

"Robert Bonomi" > wrote in message
ervers.com...
> In article >,
> Veeduber > wrote:
> [[.. munch ..]]
> > strapped it to the top of my 1965 VW bus and ran it up & down Highway
> >395 to see how it worked. Which was good, except for that nice man from the
> >California Highway Patrol... who eventually let me off with a warning.
>
> I can just _imagine_ that conversation!
>
> Has to rival one I had when I went through a radar speed trap at an
> excessive speed, _on_a_bicycle_. Long, *long*, time ago -- and, at that
> time, in that place, the speed limit statutes applied to *motor* vehicles
> only. It was apparently a slow afternoon for law-enforcement, and fairly
> shortly there was a 'committee meeting' of what seemed to be _most_ of
> the cops for that side of town. _Spirited_ discussion regarding what *could*
> I be cited for, if they were of a mind to do so. Even 'reckless driving'
> turned out to be a 'motor vehicle'(only) offense. Something like 30 minutes
> later, with more than a dozen officers 'on scene', including 2 sargents,
> and a lieutenant, nobody had been able to find anything that 'fit the crime'.
> Note: I'd been 'free to go' since shortly after the 1st additional officer
> showed up on the scene, but it the whole thing was _good_ entertainment, so
> I stuck around to watch the show. <grin>
>
>

Well, if you were free to go, and you stuck around, why were you going so fast to begin with?

;-)

--
Dan D.
http://www.ameritech.net/users/ddevillers/start.html


..

[Ernest Christley]

Richard Lamb wrote:
> guynoir wrote:
>
>>I've been doing a lot of reverse engineering using Deltacad. I scan a
>>1963-vintage mylar drawing and then paste it full size into Deltacad,
>>then I can trace directly over the image. I've done drawings 13 feet
>>long and 5 feet wide that way (these are Sikorsky S-64 parts). I can
>>use Deltacad to adjust the scale of the image in x and y directions to
>>get within .020 across a 12 foot drawing, but I have to use an image
>>editor to take any warpage, skew etc. out of the image.
>>
>>Once I get a usable 2d vector drawing, I can import it into a modeling
>>program and design tooling, flat patterns, 3d parts, etc. Deltacad
>>works much better than the automatic vectorizing program I was using before.
>>
>>Another thing I really like about Deltacad is the great flexibility and
>>ease of printing drawings on a large format plotter (or any printer for
>>that matter). The Oshkosh satellite photo posted here a couple weeks
>>ago happened to be a really high resolution image. I copied it into
>>Deltacad and printed it out on 42" wide photo paper. It looks really
>>nice thumb tacked to the wall.
>>
>>I used the demo version for about a year before I sprung $50 for the
>>non-watermark version.
>>
>>For me, Deltacad is the ultimate tracing paper.
>>
>>--
>>John Kimmel

>>
>>I think it will be quiet around here now. So long.
>
>
>
> I WANT YOUR PRINTER !

Printing large format can be difficult. I drew the wing rib profiles of
the Dyke Delta (each one is different) and took them down to the local
CopyMax. It was to big and they couldn't handle it. First of all, it
had to be in PDF format and then it just locked up thier computer.

We finally figured out that we could print it half-size on one of their
printers and then use one of there automatic enlargers to get it to the
proper size. The printout was 8ftx4ft.

--
http://www.ernest.isa-geek.org/
"Ignorance is mankinds normal state,
alleviated by information and experience."
Veeduber

[Stealth Pilot]

On 24 Aug 2004 19:34:07 GMT, (Veeduber) wrote:


>He's trying to track down some tracing paper.

plain paper photocopy it at 100%.
cut and join to get up to size then place face down on your wood and
using a hot dry iron iron the back of the photocopy. the paper may
scorch a little but it will transfer the dry electrostatic toner
perfectly onto what you want to cut.
works perfectly on to plywood and balsa and .....
your photocopy remains readable.

copying the leading edge profile of 20 ribs = 20 photocopies at a
worst case.

Stealth Pilot

[Ryan Young]

(Veeduber) wrote in message >...
> Got a call the other night from a total stranger .... He's trying to track down some tracing paper.

http://www.artsupply.com/alvin/tracing.htm
Architects use it by the running yard, at least those of the old
school. Sometimes it's easier to think with a pencil than with a CAD
program when doing preliminary sketches.

> Waxed
> paper makes great tracing paper but nowadays most folks don't carry those
> narrow-lead wax pencils you need to write on the stuff.

Usually referred to these days as "Film pencils" or "Mylar pencils".
Try colored leads for a mechanical pencil. You trace on the less waxy
side.

> Truth is, I haven't used real tracing paper since the late 1950's when it was
> replaced by frosted acetate and later by frosted Mylar.

Mylar gets a bit spendy, and Acetate is worse. The non-frosted stuff
can be marked with a Sharpie. The frosted stuff (a starch coating
gets put on it) can take pencil or pen.
http://www.artsuppliesonline.com/catalog.cfm?cata_id=4984

Another way to transfer plans is to use Dressmakers Carbon and a
tracing wheel. Transfer directly onto whatever you're going to use,
either for a pattern, a jig, or a part.

[Blueskies]

I use this stuff for the small planes...

http://www.seetemp.com/order.htm

--
Dan D.
http://www.ameritech.net/users/ddevillers/start.html


..
"Ryan Young" > wrote in message om...
> (Veeduber) wrote in message >...
>> Got a call the other night from a total stranger .... He's trying to track down some tracing paper.
>
> http://www.artsupply.com/alvin/tracing.htm
> Architects use it by the running yard, at least those of the old
> school. Sometimes it's easier to think with a pencil than with a CAD
> program when doing preliminary sketches.
>
>> Waxed
>> paper makes great tracing paper but nowadays most folks don't carry those
>> narrow-lead wax pencils you need to write on the stuff.
>
> Usually referred to these days as "Film pencils" or "Mylar pencils".
> Try colored leads for a mechanical pencil. You trace on the less waxy
> side.
>
>> Truth is, I haven't used real tracing paper since the late 1950's when it was
>> replaced by frosted acetate and later by frosted Mylar.
>
> Mylar gets a bit spendy, and Acetate is worse. The non-frosted stuff
> can be marked with a Sharpie. The frosted stuff (a starch coating
> gets put on it) can take pencil or pen.
> http://www.artsuppliesonline.com/catalog.cfm?cata_id=4984
>
> Another way to transfer plans is to use Dressmakers Carbon and a
> tracing wheel. Transfer directly onto whatever you're going to use,
> either for a pattern, a jig, or a part.

[Joe Maj]

(Veeduber) wrote in message >...
> Got a call the other night from a total stranger who identified himself as a
> fellow resident of northern San Diego county and a homebuilder, too, although
> he lives up near the Pala Indian reservation which puts him even farther out in
> the sticks than me.
>
> He's trying to track down some tracing paper.

I went to the local Michaels craft store and bought a 50 sheet pad of
Strathmore tracing paper (11X14") for about $6. Look in the art
supplies section.

[jls]

"Joe Maj" > wrote in message
om...
> (Veeduber) wrote in message
>...
> > Got a call the other night from a total stranger who identified himself
as a
> > fellow resident of northern San Diego county and a homebuilder, too,
although
> > he lives up near the Pala Indian reservation which puts him even farther
out in
> > the sticks than me.
> >
> > He's trying to track down some tracing paper.
>
> I went to the local Michaels craft store and bought a 50 sheet pad of
> Strathmore tracing paper (11X14") for about $6. Look in the art
> supplies section.

We used mylar from the art supply stores. While building Murphy Renegades
we traced parts like ribs and gussets onto the mylar, then cut the mylar to
size and shape, then traced the mylar piece directly onto .125" or .063"
aircraft aluminum, or as the case might be. Then over to the band saw, then
to the sanding belt and files for deburring, then to the drill press. Then
to the alodine vats. And so on. If the piece needed bending, we had a
brake for the purpose.