All encompassing compass considerations

[JerseyCity Frankie]

I’m looking for “The Perfect Compass”. I’ve never found one that suited my specifications for “The Perfect Compass”. The world is encircled by inadequate compasses. If you drew a pie chart, using a disappointing compass, you could show that there’s only a tiny slice devoted to “serious compasses” and the rest of the pie is made up of cheap dollar store flimsy compasses, often made of plastic. 

the “serious compasses” are nearly as bad as the cheap flimsy ones in terms of performance. 

My requirements for a compass are simple. I need it to stay in the adjustment I set it to. Most compasses “open up” as you draw the circle and you only notice when the two ends fail to meet at the completion of the circle. 80% of the time I’m using my compass as a divider, for measuring, and this tendency for the tool to lose its adjustment mid-use means I’m treating the tool like a glass of nitroglycerin as I move it from the thing I’m measuring to the place I’m recording the measurement, I never trust the compass to remain fixed and unaltered. For this I guess you have to hav a Screw-adjusting Compass.

the other requirement is that I want the compass to allow me to use a pencil in it, not tiny awkward proprietary bits of naked lead I have to keep in stock and endlessly fuss with.

 

 You can certainly find compasses that accept an ordinary pencil.

and you can certainly find high-end compasses that are Screw-Adjusted. But apparently you can’t get both features in the same quality instrument. 

This one is my favorite, as you can see it’s ancient. Modern versions are available but the metal they use to make them is so malleable it’s FLOPPY.

I had high hopes for this one but the plastic sleeve that holds the pencil is elastic! The pencil isn’t really fixed and unmovable.

Same problem with this one. Everything is fine but for the means of attaching the pencil, the pencil flexes in the joint. Sigh.

 

Edited August 21, 2018 by JerseyCity Frankie

[jud]

Have several drafting compasses that are for lead and ink, they are equipped with two outside heads, the lead sticks and a piece of sand paper are easy to obtain. The Ones I prefer are the drop bow type, they have an inner radius needle that slides so you can place the point on the mark unencumbered with the rest of the device and when satisfied the point is where it needs to be, release the remainder of the tool and draw the circle.

Edited August 21, 2018 by jud

[Roger Pellett]

Frank,  Woodcraft Supply has just what you may be looking for.  From time to time they feature specially manufactured products by a company called Woodpeckers.  They are presently accepting orders for a pair of compasses.  Expensive, at $137 but appear well made.  Not the standard bow compasses but an adaption of the trammel compass.  Right now, i’m Trying to convince myself that I really need one.

 

Roger

[JerseyCity Frankie]

You will have to imagine me shouting comically “One hundred and thirty seven dollars”?!?!  Lol, too expensive. I’m too cheap to spend $100 for nearly anything in my life! 

[Roger Pellett]

Frank,  We have designer clothes, shoes, fragrances, etc.  we might as well have designer tools!  But, I agree, 137 is a lot of $$$.

 

Roger

[Bob Cleek]

Not to hurt your feelings, but you will never get the accuracy you are looking for (and deserve!) with instruments designed for use by high school geometry students. You need the same tools the draftsman who drew the plans with which you are working used to draw them. As with any other tool, you get what you pay for. Fortunately, thanks to manual drafting ("mechanical drawing") being replaced in the industry by CAD, there is quite a bit of high quality drafting and measuring tools available on eBay. (Admittedly, there used to be a lot more, but the collectors are like seagulls over a garbage barge.)

 

As you have learned from experience, the expense of fine drafting instruments is all about their rigidity and ability to "hold a set." The "joints" or "unions" of high quality instruments will not have to be reset all the time. Moreover, if you are only interested in drawing circles or marking arcs, you need a compass. Not one that holds a pencil, but one that holds a 2mm drawing lead, which is easily obtainable from art and stationary supply stores. (The difference is analogous to the difference between holding something in a collet and in a three jaw chuck.) These leads are easily kept razor sharp with a swipe on a flat piece of sandpaper. If you want to transfer measurements, you need a pair of dividers. A compass will do the same, but the dividers will not mark up your plans with pencil marks when in use and will be easier to use accurately. The high quality dividers (as pictured below) have hairspring adjustments. (You set the measure by spreading the legs. The hairspring adjustment "fine tunes" the point thereafter so that the setting can be absolutely perfect. (Important in scaling, where one can "split the line" when placing a point because, at full scale, the drawn line on the plans could be a half inch wide! That makes a big difference when taking off a vessel's lines to construct a table of offsets.)

 

If you are working with different scales, you will find a pair of proportional dividers invaluable. (Keuffel and Esser's Paragon 10" model pictured top below.) These come in various sizes. (The 10" ones are preferable, as are all with rack and pinion setting.) The best are those which are scaled decimally, so that the proportion expressed as a decimal can be set exactly. (The pair below have Vernier scaling feature allowing for proportions set to .005) When a distance is set on one side of the proportional dividers, the proportionate distance, as desired and set, will be readable from the opposite set of points. (It can also be used as a regular divider, obviously, but is less convenient than using a regular divider.)

 

The lower picture is of a set of Keuffel and Esser Paragon drafting instruments, known as a "three bow set," having a basic selection of dividers and compasses and ruling pens. "Paragon" designated K&E's top-of-the line instruments, all hand-fitted of German silver (a nickel and copper alloy, also called "nickel silver.") They are generally considered the finest drafting instruments ever sold by a US vendor. (Dietzgen, the other US top-quality vendor's top line was their "Gem Union" instruments.) Other fine quality brands are Aarau Kern, Bowen, Alteneder, and Charles Bruning. All of the worthwhile instruments (and all of junk, as well) will be made in Germany or Switzerland. Most of the top vendors will have "lines" that range from "student" to "apprentice," to "professional," and usually an additional "finestkind" line, like K&E's "Paragon" and Dietzgen's "Gem Union."

 

The Keuffel and Esser and Dietzgen catalogs are on line and can be googled. (https://books.google.com/books?id=P1gZAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=three+legged+divider&source=bl&ots=PY4vqrKjTl&sig=lNmQcCSIBxrsoATGVrhgzG8FJGM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MRltVK2YHIqaigLF3oGICw#v=onepage&q=three legged divider&f=false)These are full of information on the products they offered and their ranges of quality. You don't need the "top of the line" for modeling, but a good "professional" quality set, or even just a pair of dividers and a compass from a good quality set, will serve. The collector's market is looking for pristine "mint quality" sets with all the instruments present. There are many partial sets with missing instruments, or instruments singly, that are offered on eBay at a fraction of the cost of a "perfect" set. Look under "drafting," and you should be able to find something suitable. A pair of "Paragon" proportional dividers as pictured below will go for between $50 and $200, depending on the condition of the case, or lack of a case, and the instrument's condition. (A bit of tarnishing isn't going to affect the performance of the instrument at all.) A full "three bow" Paragon drafting set as pictured will probably run between $150 and $300, assuming the case is in decent condition and all the instruments are there. If the case is trashed, the felt faded and worn, the case grippers shot, an instrument or three are missing (like ruling pens, which you might not need,) and the like, two or three bows, a pair of dividers, and a of compass with leg extensions, which may be a bit tarnished and the steel threads a bit rusted, might be had for as little as $25.00. Like anything on eBay, you have to know what you are looking at and be willing to wait.

 

Bottom line, "dime store" student compasses are never be satisfactory for serious use. If you find the prices high even for the used stuff on eBay, just remember that the price of a Paragon "three bow" set as pictured below (that one sold recently for about $235) when new cost about $750 in today's money. These were and are serious technical instruments. Few of us would ever have been able to afford to purchase them for hobby use until CAD made them obsolete in most of industry. Instruments of this quality are no longer made, (the labor cost of hand-fitting is prohibitive today,) so they are likely to only increase in value over time.

 

Serious modelers beware! Collecting drafting instruments, many, if not most, of which are invaluable additions to a modeler's shipyard tool kit, is highly addicitive!

 

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by Bob Cleek

[JerseyCity Frankie]

I’m familiar with Keuffel and Esser, they used to have a manufacturing plant in the town adjacent to my home in Jersey City, Hoboken, N. J. The Hoboken historical Museum put on an exhibition of the history of K &E a few years ago, on display were hundreds of K&E instruments of every description. It was a great exhibit! http://hoboken.pastperfectonline.com/bysearchterm?keyword=Keuffel+%26+Esser+Co.

 

but I am fed up with proprietary lead-holder compasss, as I said. I find them to be too much trouble. You are right though, I should admit defeat and just live with the necessity of stocking a tiny transparent tube of rediculous short bits of lead.  But I feel it shouldn't be a daunting engineering challenge to fix a pencil to a compass frame, after placing men on the moon I think we can handle that much. 

Would LOVE a K&E proportional divider but they are very dear on eBay. A quick glance shows them at $95. to $200. , too expensive for a cheapo like me. 

[Jim Rogers]

My question is why are you posting a question about compasses at 0530 in the morning. Insomnia?🤔

[Bob Cleek]

16 hours ago, JerseyCity Frankie said:

...but I am fed up with proprietary lead-holder compasss, as I said. I find them to be too much trouble. You are right though, I should admit defeat and just live with the necessity of stocking a tiny transparent tube of rediculous short bits of lead.  But I feel it shouldn't be a daunting engineering challenge to fix a pencil to a compass frame, after placing men on the moon I think we can handle that much. 

Would LOVE a K&E proportional divider but they are very dear on eBay. A quick glance shows them at $95. to $200. , too expensive for a cheapo like me. 

Come on now, Shipmate! "Proprietary lead?" Naw. The good compasses use standard 2 MM drafting lead, the same as used in mechanical drafting pencils. Buy them at any art or stationery store.  Many are supplied new with little cartouches that hold a few leads and, in the good quality sets, some extra points, but the lead is sold in tubes containing lead about six inches long. A compass should use hard lead (H2 at least,) which is going to last a long time, so you won't be having to add new lead very often. I'm sure you can live with that!

 

There are pretty good "carpenters' compasses" that will hold a pencil, but you'll pay the same, if not more, for a new one of those than you will for a used good quality drafting instrument and you will never, ever, get the same accuracy out of any sort of pencil in a compass. When working to small scales, that can make a big difference.

 

Don't give up on that proportional divider. Because they are getting scarce, it seems the Indian scrap metal recycling and knock-off industry is flooding the market with "solid brass" ones. There is no such thing as a decent "solid brass" proportional divider, so ignore those, but keep an eye on "proportional dividers" and "drafting" on eBay and I'm sure you'll find one that fits your pocketbook. Below is a decent one currently offered at a "buy it now" price of $35.00. It's a good quality Dietzgen proportional divider. It doesn't have rack and pinion adjustment, it isn't decimally scaled, and it's a six inch model, or so it appears, but it is German silver and hand fitted. You will have scaled settings for "lines" that will list common fractions and you can estimate from there for odd-ball proportions, or draw fixed distance lines in each scale and adjust the dividers by trial and error until one end matches one line and the other end matches the other line and you're good to go. This one is smaller, but perfectly good for modeling purposes, needs a bit of polishing (or not, depending upon your taste) and the outside of the case is scuffed up. For $35, it's still a good deal. Model Expo is selling the same size cheapo steel Tacro model for $99 and it is really junk.

 

See: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Dietzgen-Proportional-Compass-Divider-22-Lines-and-Circles-With-Case/273418226161?hash=item3fa8ff09f1:g:x~sAAOSwG9ZbetgC

 

I don't have any personal interest in this item. I'm just encouraging you to take the leap into a whole new level of tool-dom!  The don't make tools this good anymore and probably never will again. We're talking "jewelry" here. Your grandkids will love to have it left to them (Or not.) LOL

 

 

 

[el cid]

There’s a reason compass leads are used in drafting, as opposed to just chucking a pencil on one leg.  Compass leads aren’t sharpened to a conical point like a pencil, they’re sharpened to a bevel. That way as the lead dulls, the diameter of the circle (or arc) doesn’t decrease too (as measured at the inner edge of the line). Hard to picture in the mind’s eye, but I suspect if one could find an old drafting textbook, this would be better explained and illustrated.

 

Cheers all,

 

Keith

[Bob Cleek]

7 hours ago, el cid said:

There’s a reason compass leads are used in drafting, as opposed to just chucking a pencil on one leg.  Compass leads aren’t sharpened to a conical point like a pencil, they’re sharpened to a bevel. That way as the lead dulls, the diameter of the circle (or arc) doesn’t decrease too (as measured at the inner edge of the line). Hard to picture in the mind’s eye, but I suspect if one could find an old drafting textbook, this would be better explained and illustrated.

 

Cheers all,

 

Keith

Precisely why a pencil compass will never be as accurate as a lead-holding compass. Perhaps more simply put, as the pencil lead wears down, the "pencil leg" of the compass gets shorter, thereby reducing the radius of the circle drawn by the compass. It may initially be a minor variance, but enough to be significant. The same thing happens with a lead in a lead holder, particularly when the compass lead is sharpened on sandpaper, and so the compass must be reset after sharpening in any event. A conical pencil point will wear more quickly than the angle presented by a sharpened compass lead, though, and as either point wears, the line drawn widens, which creates even greater chance of measuring errors. These problems are very familiar to anyone familiar with lofting lines for full sized boatbuilding from plans drawn at a smaller scale, and is indeed why lofting full size is necessary when building vessels, rather than simply taking the dimensions off the plans.

[puckotred]

On 8/22/2018 at 5:24 AM, Bob Cleek said:

I have no use for this and hardly know what it is for but I REALLY REALLY need this set...

[Bob Cleek]

12 hours ago, puckotred said:

I have no use for this and hardly know what it is for but I REALLY REALLY need this set...

Buy one and you'll find a use for it. It's got pens for India inking drawings and a large dividers and a small dividers and a couple of small compasses and a big one with an extension bar. Track "drafting" on eBay and they come up now and again. Look closely and make sure it's a complete set, though. A lot of times the parts have gone missing. The set pictured is actually missing it's "horn center." The horn center is a penny-sized round metal piece with three small points on the bottom and a piece of transparent horn material in the center. It is for placing on top of a point on a drawing that is used a lot to place a divider or compass point. The horn center thus prevents a hole from being worn in the drawing from the point placements. They are almost always missing from sets. The horn center would have set on top of the leather circle in the pictured cent.

[jud]

You are not drafting for others, quality requirements are yours to determine. You have been presented with options with reasons. Being the judge, obtain what you wish, if it someday needs upgrading, you now have some background about what to look for.

 

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Often the question, or variation on the question, “what are the most essential ship model tools” comes up. X-acto is the king, I think we all agree. But I’d say a decent compass is a close second on the list of Esential Tools. the discussion of available designs of compasses and dividers is valid and I hope others will put up photos of their favorite compasses and dividers. Maybe there’s a particularly good model we can discover that way? 

The point of expense is also valid, every one of us has a different amount of discretionary income. There are some tools that are simply too expensive for some of us.

I do feel that the joy of life is in part made up of owning all the particular tools to pursue ones interests! The hunt for these tools is part of the fun. I’ve often said that if I ever discovered a single source for all the nautical books I’ve ever wanted or needed to own, in one location for a price so affordable I could instantly own them all, it would take a great deal of joy out of my life since there would then be no worlds left to conquer. No reason to enter another used book store? No thanks!

I kinda feel the same way about tools.

[michael mott]

I would just add use the appropriate tool for the job. precision drawing and measuring requires precision tools.

 

Michael

[Bob Cleek]

2 hours ago, michael mott said:

I would just add use the appropriate tool for the job. precision drawing and measuring requires precision tools.

 

Michael

Amen to that! The difference between cheap measuring and drawing instruments and not-so-cheap ones is like the difference between a cheap "toy quality" modeling table saw and one of Mr. Byrnes' precision saws. The thing about precision drafting instruments, though, is that they aren't making them anymore. The labor costs for handwork to produce precision instruments has made the quality instruments too expensive to make for a market that is now infatuated with CAD technology. It's a matter of getting 'em while you still can in a used market where collectors are snatching up whatever they can and "users" are getting harder to come by as time goes on. Quality drafting instruments will hold their value, if not increase, in the future.

[druxey]

There is also pleasure in handling and using a well designed and beautifully crafted instrument or tool. You will never experience this if you only use 'handyman specials'. And you will get better results. It's worth waiting while you save up for a really good quality tool.

[lehmann]

The above advice to use professional drafting compasses is the best option. 

Best compass I own:  Made my living with it many years back and still use it. 

Made by Staedtler, but I don't see anything similar on their web page.  A few on eBay though. 

The double start thread allows fast adjustments by just pulling on the arms, but the thread is fine enough for accurate setting.  The ferule on the nut jams it tight, stopping any movement.  

Edited August 28, 2018 by lehmann

[jud]

Bruce, have one similar hanging in it's box on the peg board, $16.95 in 1994 on the tag glued to the box., 'C2E Bavarian' 6 1/2".