A bit of pre-AutoCAD drafting history

[Julie@Integra]

...Computer drafting has tons of advantages over hand drafting, but I do miss the heightened sense of art and planning that hand drafting always challenged me with.

That's what I often miss about on-the-board drafting: the "art" of it.

I can still put my artistic stamp on CAD drawings by how they're organized... but it can be fairly easily duplicated. There was no doubt when looking at my old drawings -- back in the day -- that it was mine.
...........

I remember the mylar and sepia paper; pin registration... and the throat-burning, eye-watering ammonia emanating from the print room.

I still have some blue-leaded pencils and other ancient tools of the trade, including my electric eraser. I'll never part with them.

**sigh** Ahhh, the good ol' days. (I must admit, though, I'd never forfeit copy-and-paste to go backwards.... I don't have the patience anymore.)

[WVCE84]

I have not added any pictures for a while so...
DSC00046.JPG
eraser shield

DSC00047.JPG
I'm not 100% sure, but I think it is some kind of offset tool

[Alan Cullen]

WVCE84,

The second piccie is a Leroy lettering gizmo. If you look at my piccies on page 2 you'll see how it works.

[brassworks]

A very early model of this lettering stylus thingie was shaped very much the same, but instead of the Leroy pen being fixed into it, a little ink-filled cup that tapered down into a pen nib was inserted. It pre-dates my Leroy days; it must have been a lot of fun to fill those little cups with ink with a minimum of drops and spilling.

[ReMark]

Still have my original Leroy lettering set and all the guides. We also used to have a much larger set of guides for doing out title sheets. The text size was up to 2". The size of the Leroy stylus was huge!

Anyone have an old lettering template? The type with the punched out letters that you traced?

[Alan Cullen]

I've still got my Leroy lettering set, plus all my old manual drafting gear. Thank god I don't have to use them anymore.

[Dipali]

Still have my original Leroy lettering set and all the guides. We also used to have a much larger set of guides for doing out title sheets. The text size was up to 2". The size of the Leroy stylus was huge!

Anyone have an old lettering template? The type with the punched out letters that you traced?

Yes, I do have it somewhere in my private collection.
we used to call it 'STENCIL'. It used to come in varied sizes. the most common being used were 2mm, 3mm & 5mm within the drawing and 8mm, 12mm for teh titleblock part.
I have intresting experiance to share about it.
when I was studying in first year of architecture degree course, one of my senior friend asked me to help her with submission work (we always used to help with each other in drafting or modeling part) & she wanted me to do stanciling in her working drawings for her. I had not tried it before & bcs i was afraid of messing her drawings, I declined. but than I thought to myself, I will have to do something about it. so in the next semister for one of my assignment of histroy i was documenting architecture of historical place & i had to do 13 - A2 size sheets with detail write ups, so i decided to do it with stencils for a practice. when I started it it was taking me about 5hrs. to do one sheet, but after few sheets I got the hang of it & I could finish one sheet in 2 hrs. And when everybody at Uni sow it they, were amazed & were 'like have u gone mad?'
Also when I started working in an office we had those very large A0 size drawing boards, & some times I had to work on very large drawings. and when i have ot do some stenciling at the top of the sheets like notes & stuff. it was very difficult to reach to it. so i had developed habit of doing it upside down from the other side of the drawing board.

[ReMark]

Upside down and backwards, in ink, with a "# 000" size pen. That's how we would draft existing topography for our highway and sewer design sheets (mylar). Then we'd flip them over and all the proposed linework would be put in with thicker pens (#2, #3) and Leroy lettering on the front. However, all the existing topography had to be labeled on the front of the sheet, in freehand, with a slant, using both uppercase and lowercase letters. There could be as many as 200 sheets.

I got so used to being able to read/write upside down lettering that I could reproduce it at will when sketching out an idea, with callouts, to a co-worker sitting across a table from me.

[WVCE84]

WVCE84,

The second piccie is a Leroy lettering gizmo. If you look at my piccies on page 2 you'll see how it works.

Cool, I must have missed that one the first time around.

[BM Drafting]

I was in a combined Year 11 and 12 class doing Graphics...
I was in Year 12,
We had a final exam and most of the year 11's were packing it...

We had drawing boards with little steel clips (sping steel)

While loading up my plans i lifted up the clip and praaaaang...
it snapped in half flew across the room and hit the black board...

Not thinking i turned to my mate and said

Spring stell my A%&....

a little louder then expected...
my teacher was rolling on the floor laughing...
if i see him down the street even today, he's like remember that time...

ha ha ha ha


Long story short, the rest of the exam was very relaxed with class amtes quitely chuckling away...

Since we were reminicing...