mikehannah

Hi Folks
I have the usual problem of building the wings on a built up kit but the plans only give me one wing panel.
I have vague recollections of being able to wipe the back of paper plans with some common chemical which make the paper practically transparent but doesnt adversely effect the papers strength. Do any of the old hands out there remember what the chemical is?

Mike

2 Piece

My Feedback: (8)

I have used vegetable oil (cooking type) with good results.
2 Piece

linclogs

Ditto what 2 piece said about the cooking oil. In fact, many years ago some instructions included in kits told you to do this. It was a cost savings for the kit companies - they didn't have to print as big a plan by just showing one wing panel, although this doesn't work too well if the plan was printed on both sides! And as long as you put something like waxed paper over the oiled plans, you won't have to worry about the oil soaking into the balsa. But it doesn't take much oil to make the paper transparent anyway.

flianbrian

I'm a pasta fan so I used olive oil
You don't even have to oil the whole sheet, just the lines you want to show through. Lightly wet a paper towel with the oil and rub it into the paper, no need to get it sloppy oily.

The instructions for my first kit suggested the oil method. I work on a copy, not the original.

flian'

Borzak

My Feedback: (2)

How big are they?

If you have a drafting supply place in town they can copy and reverse it. It's hard to do with a xerox type copier but if they have a blueprint machine (actually a blueline machine) it's easy to make a reverse image.

Make a regular xerox type copy (they can do that too) onto a velium - put the velium thru the blue line copy backwards. You can also run the velium upside down thru a xerox but it comes out real washed out - the blueline machine will make it come out crisp as if you did it the right way.

Anyway most places can handle at least 24" x 36" and a lot can handle 36"x48" -what we have here at the house both xerox and blueline

AlphaWhisky

Just yesterday I took a single wing tracing into the copy shop and asked for a pair of prints.

The girl there ran the tracing through the machine same way twice, but second time must have pressed a button somewhere as the second copy was reversed.

That means I no longer need draw on tracing paper to get a pair of wing prints.

Learn something new every day.

As far as chemicals on paper to make them translucent; we used to use kerosene (parafin?). Some of those type chemicals would cause the plan to return to opaque when dry so we would print them in reverse before that happened.

Alan W.

Dsegal

Just put a piece of tracing paper of the drawing and redraw it with a pencil and straightedge. Then flip it over and no salad oil smells. BTW, some peope spray WD-40 on the drawings.

Dave Segal