stefanP

My Feedback: (2)

Well guys I want to try my hand at drawing my own plans.Besides a pencil and a calculator what else should I have for tools? Please don't say r/c cad[:@]!! I like useing a pencilThanxs for looking.stefanP

dicknadine

don't think you are ready to start drawing plans, quite yet. or WHO's Leg are you trying to pull ? dick

parabellum

well, a pencil and paper and ruler and a table would be all that is needed.

calculator would be nice.

BMatthews

Some basic draughting tools are nice. Like a T square and a 60/30 and 45 triangle of good size for the vertical lines. And a compass for doing circles. A table top that tilts is nice too so you don't have to hover over the drawing and get a sore back.

If you're really commited to the pencil and paper you can talk nice to me and I'll sell you my big Vemco Vtrack draughting machine... CHEAP

stefanP

My Feedback: (2)

Guys thanxs for the info.Bmatthews thanxs for the offer.I just looked up those tables and they look real sweet.DICK I'm not pulling anybodys leg.I just want to have planes nobody elese has or afraid to try to build.Is this so wrong?stefanP

dicknadine

morning. I am with you. There's a long list of the required things, tools etc,, but lets start with your desire. look at the 3 view you want to enlarge. get your calculator, pencils, big tri-angles (90, 45 degree),straight edge, ruler, compass, large sheets of paper ( white wrapping paper works good). draw a horizontal line full length, etc .etc,etc. could go on and on and on, but thats another installment. is this what your looking for or What ? drafting, automotive,aeronautical, marine engineering/design has been my life since early 1940's. dick

stefanP

My Feedback: (2)

Yes it is.Like I said earlier I just want to know what basic tools I should have.I also understand you just can't explain 40+ years of experiance over the computer. Dick one other question;You posted a picture of your living room on another thread.In the pic I see a Hansa-Brandenberg W-29 W.W. I float plane.Can I get you comments on it flies? I also take it is a giant scale plane.Slick idea on the wheels attached to the floats.thanxs,stefanP

CoosBayLumber

My Feedback: (1)

I cannot beleive some of the termonology that is being used by the respondants who are indicating they have 40+ years of drafting experience. What is being quoted are terms used by a sophomore in high school, not by a professional. You begin by obtaining an engineering SCALE, not a ruler. A ruler is the item which the high school teacher will wack a student over the head with for being tardy. You cannot easily multiply feet and inches, much the same as you cannot multiply inches and fractions, without going through a conversion process. The engineering scale marked in tenths, will permit speedy resizing. Look for one that has been machine engraved, not a cheap cast plastic one, for accuracy considerations. As a check, just lay a scale up against a ruler and see if the marks align with one another. Lay it up against several, and you ought to soon analyse that one inch is not always the same length. If you need to work with fractions of an inch also, then obtain an Architect's scale too.

In all the offices that I worked in and visited, they almost NEVER had a tilting drafting board in use, so nix that idea. It will soon be evident that you cannot simply lay an object onto a tilted surface without it sliding off. Most the tables had a series of brown coffee cup circles, and you too will be tempted to rest a container of fluids onto the top, but you can't do this on a tilted table. Can you imagine trying to hold onto a Tee square, a triangle, a drafting pen and then align properly over another line on a tilting table? Take a look at those old photos of Henry Ford's drafting room in the 1920, 1930's and you will not see a tilted drafting table in the hundreds pictured.


The tee square requires an accurately milled table edge, and rigid construction. Not for the neophyte. Forget that routine of a tee square, and find one of the sliding drafting parallel rules. These are cheaper, popular, smaller, lighter and faster to use. They are held to the surface of the table with two steel wires running to the top and bottom edges of the table. You align it with your centerline, and can twist these about 10 degrees from horizontal and make a whole series of parallel lines, they don't slide away and remain to the tilt much as a drafting machine does. Once done, you uncouple the wires and lay to the side, all within 30 seconds. I have used a Vemco drafting machine and they tend to get into the way after their need is up ten minutes later. They quickly lay out angles, but everything in an A/C is so horizontal or perpendicular I cannot think of their ready need, or something which can't be done using a protractor.

You rough out, sketch out, lay out a proposed project onto something. You will then revise, alter, modify, add-to, but you will not correct. Correction means you did something wrong, whereas the other terms still indicate that lines are to be removed and replaced, but with an explanation. Which brings us to another point in that to begin, don't go in on the cheap. Do not use "meat wrapping paper", cardboard, copier or tracing paper. These will not stand up to the revisons. The industry as a majority uses Mylar, but that is a whole different learning process. Obtain an electric erasing machine, plus some pink pearl points. By working on vellum, (or Fade-Out) the sheet can have lines laid and removed numerous times and not destroy the surface. The cheap papers will not handle but one erasure. Fade-out also is reproducible, and resists shrinkage, tears, and is generally of higher quality than other media. It will usually have an accurately placed grid to which instead of measuring off a whole 32 inches, you can count the squares and then make an accurate placement of a line. If in the future, you come back to the same project, Fade-out will easily accept drafting ink from a Koh-i-noor pen and not bleed like cheap paper does. You then can trace over the fixed and good lines for better reproduction. In visiting a drafting store, instead of purchasing a 100 foot long roll of vellum at $35, they sell bordered pre-cut sheets for about 25 cents locally.

As to curves. I obtained a set of highway curves. These are accurately milled plastic templates to radaii of 3 inches to 200 inches in steps. These are popular due to the large segment of civil engineers across the nation. When you lay out the bottom of a fuselage from offsets, these things come in handy. Otherwise you can use a long French curve, the ones shaped like a Pirate Pistol are my preference.

Find an old drafting instruction book at the swap meet for $1 and it will outline much of the tools and techniques which have been used for a century now.


Wm.

dicknadine

my answer to you was as I see things- Not trying to be funny-- just trying to explain things as I do them. let some of the other responends come up the Quantiy and Quality of my Models and I will be quite. dick

dreadnaut

My Feedback: (5)

dreadnaut

My Feedback: (5)

OOPS
I cannot believe that you have seen so many "offices" where they did not know about drafting tape. (draughting for our canadian freinds).

dicknadine

hey GUYS-- lets lay off the P---ing contest. we don't need it..we all have our way to do it--it may old or it may be new. it works for us as individuals. lets just pass it along and hope some of its rubs off, to the Good of the HOBBY. dick

dicknadine

send me a note off line please. dick

Rayden

I know I'm not the only one who uses an overhead projector and graph paper. Just another possibility.

dicknadine

sounds GOOD. lets add it to the list. never have thought about it. dick

BMatthews

I did that for a couple of plans long ago. I even prepared a test page for setting up the projector. It had scale hash lines in each corner and I would project the test page and then measure the hash mark distances to ensure the projection wasn't skewed. Once set you exchange the sheets and you're away.

dicknadine

going back over the thread, I don't know if I answered the quetion on the W-29. I found photos and small 3 vu's. decided I wanted a wing span of 81", so got out the roll of bookprint paper and started to enlarge the outline, lets see 8" ws x ? = 81" try 10.125 . so multiply every thing by 10.125. pretty soon everything takes shape. then the hard part, what size balsa sticks to use-- well all I can say is many years of doing is the answer. but basically on something this big, you would use 1/4x1/4 to 3/8x3/8 for fuselage, etc-- etc --etc. sorry I can't give you an engineering degree in a few words. it takes a lot of exerience of sucess and failures. I would suggest you buy a small kit and blow up the diamentions like I decribed above. try it. let me know how your doing. dick

CafeenMan

Personally, I can't stand working on tables that don't tilt. I don't leave my tools on the table so sliding off isn't a problem. Plus, my table is an A-frame with adjustable clamping pressure. That means I can grab the front of the table at any time and tilt it where ever I want.

If not for being able to tilt it, I would have a heck of a time working on the top of the drawing. I can't lean over that far to see what I'm doing.

Stefan - get a good set of ships curves. French curves are good for artists, but not for drafting. They're too sharp. An electric eraser is nice to have. Also, mechanical pencils .3mm - .9mm. A lead pointer is good too with a hard lead to do your layout.

Oh. An adjustable triangle is awesome.

For long curves, I use a piece of 1/8" x 1/4" spruce taped down as necessary. I've never been able to get adjustable spline curves to work and the rubber coated lead curves get kinks in them which makes them worthless.

- Paul

Ed Smith

Well, if we wish our terminology to be that perfect then a ruler has nothing to do with measuring. A ruler is something or somebody who rules over things. A dictator would be a ruler.

If we wish to measure things we use a "Rule"

Ed S

dicknadine

Stefan. have tried to help you with the way I do it. sorry if I have confused you with plain words--Not fancy words of the so called experts. apparently they spend their time criticizing rather than building model airplanes. if I can help you, MY WAY, drop a note off line. dick

BMatthews

Now kids, let's all play nice and not be so picky....


FWIW back in my teens when I did my plans with a T square and other basic tools I used a table that had about a 5 or 6 degree slope. Reaching the top of the paper was a bit of a stretch. More recently when I had the luxary of using the Vemco machine and full tilt table at work I tended to work standing with large sheets and sitting with smaller A or B sized paper with the table tilted to about 25 to 30 degrees and keep my "stuff" either in the little tilt tray or on the desk beside me. For me, this last method worked fabulous. I could easily see things in proper perspective and work the entire page comfortably. But it would be a pain with a basic T square. A strong tilt like that absolutley requires a Vemco or one of those black cable sliding edges (Paradraft? ParaRule? It was Para something I remember) or you end up needing more hands than nature provided.

I suppose if you want to use a T square with a tilted table the idea would be to load it up with some paper, put the T square and some triangles on the paper and then tilt it until things start to move and back up a few degrees to make sure they brake to a halt before you need to bend over.

dicknadine

OK ENOUGH said on the subject. there is no winner. we all have our past work history and ways and we all build and fly. thats what count. dick

stefanP

My Feedback: (2)

Gentalmen PLEASE! All I wanted was a simple question ansewered.I didn't want to start a yelling match!! You all have been very nice on giving you experiances.I posted the question here because I knew I'd get the best results.Now let's back to BUILDING ,DRAWING,and FLYING! the thing that makes the hobby fun[8D] Again thank all for your imput.Stefan Paneczko

Mike James

Here's how I do it...
http://www.nextcraft.com/importanceofgoodtools.html