newbie stripe questions

[EricWilliamMarshall]

- how do folks paint clean, even, straight lines?

- how do folks paint clean even wiggly/curved lines?

In the photo below, I tried a few different ways to solve this with mixed results. I'm curious how other folks solve this. Thanks again!

[Chuck]

Lots of masking works and spray with a light coat with your airbrush (multiple coats).  There are many ways actually but everyone has their own.  I personally prefer a shot of vodka and then just free-hand it.  But I know that isnt the best way to go.

 

I will tell you this...surface prep has a lot to do with it.  If your surface is smooth without a lot of bumps and blobs it will make things a lot easier.  I would sand it as smooth as possible.....and then try a variety of methods until you find one that works best for you.  Practice on some scrap first as well.  

 

Chuck

 

 

[EricWilliamMarshall]

9 minutes ago, Chuck said:

a shot of vodka and then just free-hand it.

ha ha ha - I'm not sure if that will work, but I definitely will try it!!

Edited November 11, 2019 by EricWilliamMarshall
missed word :(

[druxey]

This question came up on another build log. Another way is paint, thinned to just flow, using a bow pen.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

10 minutes ago, Chuck said:

surface prep has a lot to do with it

hmm, that is excellent thought. Many thanks!! As an aside, your work is crazy and beautiful! Delightful!

[EricWilliamMarshall]

 

3 minutes ago, druxey said:

thinned to just flow, using a bow pen

After a quick web search, I'm game to try that. I believe I actually have one, in an old drafting set, but I didn't know the name or use until now. Druxey, thank you!

[druxey]

Yup, old time manual drafting sets usually had one or more of them. By turning the wheel, you can vary your line thickness. You may want to use a finer emery paper on the insides of the blade tips so that the paint doesn't flow too quickly!

[GrandpaPhil]

Painter’s tape works wonders for me.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Given Chuck’s suggestion I took another try (well, a set of tries) at the transom I have. The one with the quarter was the earlier set of attempts. This time I scraped down each raised line slightly with a #11 blade and the used a thin brush and ye olde paint. Not award winning but better. Thanks! I’ll try the other suggestion this weekend.

Edited November 12, 2019 by EricWilliamMarshall
To avoid confusion

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Grandpa Phil, how do you handle unusual curves with the tape? Do you cut or modify the tape? 

[allanyed]

A smooth surface prep as mentioned above is key.  If you are painting a long line such as a water line or some such, and go with the masking tape method, coat  the tape edge with a clear varnish or similar coating  to seal the edge so there is less chance of the paint wicking under the tape and leaving tiny points or runs.   Once the paint varnish is dry, apply the paint and once it is completely dry, the tape will come off leaving a sharp line.   Same treatment works well with hand made stencils if they are being used for lettering.  Use high quality brushes for the fine work!!

Allan

[GrandpaPhil]

8 hours ago, EricWilliamMarshall said:

Grandpa Phil, how do you handle unusual curves with the tape? Do you cut or modify the tape? 

I cut the curve into the tape and basically make my own mask.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Ah, understood! Thanks

[EricWilliamMarshall]

As per druxey’s suggestion, I found a bow pen and gave it a shot. After a bit of prep, I experimented with the pen. It gives beautiful straight lens with almost no effort on a flat surface.

 

I played with the thickness of the paint (again as per druxey’s suggestion). I tried the thickest paint that would flow from the pen that would flow on a paper plate (being my rather fancy paint pallet) and then on the model. It bled horribly.

 

So my take away is back to Chuck’s comment about surface prep and, for.me, practice. There is great potential in the bow pen.

[Bob Cleek]

 

21 hours ago, EricWilliamMarshall said:

There is great potential in the bow pen.

Indeed, the classic draftsman's ruling pen in all it's variations is of great use to the ship modeler who discovers these instruments and uses them correctly.

There are various types of "ruling pens," each designed for a specific purpose for which each serves well, but none serve much at all for uses for which they were not intended.  Ruling pens reached the height of their evolution in the "Golden Age" of pen and ink technical drawing and are today of interest primarily to collectors of drafting instruments, although the artists and calligraphers have discovered some of them and revived their popularity to the point that some are now back in production and retail sales. http://www.dreamingdogs.com.br/en/tools.html

 

In addition to common ruling pens as pictured in the post above, there are "detail pens" which are designed to hold enough fluid to draw a quite long line without running out of ink and requiring the joining of two strokes in a given line. This is important because it is very difficult to make a perfect "joint" in a drawn line without making a mess of it. From left to right below, two adjustable line width "Swedish type" detail pens, a standard "German style" ruling pen, two "folded" long line pens of fixed line widths, and another smaller long line pen. 

 

The Keuffel and Esser "Marathon" ruling pens (below) are for making particularly wide lines and are made in fixed widths. These pens have multiple "leaves" that will hold the considerable amount of fluid required to draw a long wide line and will draw a wide line without the "bead" of ink at the tip of the pen separating as it otherwise would on a two-bladed ruling pen due to the distance between the sides of the points being too wide to hold the ink by capillary action.

 

The above ruling pens are properly used only to draw straight lines with the use of a straightedge or "rule." To obtain a curved line of uniform width, the pen must be rotated as it follows a drafting curve in order to avoid the line narrowing if the pen point isn't kept perpendicular to the curve's radius. In order to draw curved lines of uniform width, curved ruling pens are made which swivel in use when drawn along the edge of the drafting curve. There are also "railroad pens," so called because they are used by mapmakers to draw railroad tracks and road curves, which are curved ruling pens with two points which draw perfectly parallel lines an adjustable distance apart. These swiveling curved ruling pens will double as straight ruling pens by tightening a set knob at the end of their handles which will prevent them rotating on the handle. Below from left to right are a single-line curved ruling pen, two "railroad pens," and a "drop point" or "rivet" compass with a pen point attached. The "rivet compass" is not a ruling pen but is used to draw very small circles such as were drawn in the days before welding to indicate the placement of rivets on drawings.

Keuffel and Esser Barch Payzant lettering pens are designed for freehand block lettering using strokes in any direction, including curves. They hold a good amount of fluid in their wells and have round, flat nibs. These are useful for freehand lettering with paint or India ink in scale sizes and can be used for drawing straight or curved lines against an edge, but care should be taken to use an edge which is relieved on the bottom to prevent the fluid from wicking beneath the edge. They were manufactured in sets of pens with various line widths. The adjustment knobs are not for varying the width of the pen's line, but rather for adjusting the width of the space in the nib to regulate the amount of fluid flow given the thickness and viscosity of the fluid used and to facilitate cleaning.

 

As for brushes, striping and lettering is far easier when done with the proper tool for the job. Lettering brushes are made to carry a lot of paint or ink and to hold their shape. Fine line lettering and striping brushes will have long bristles relative to the width of the brush. "Pin-striping" brushes are dagger-shaped to carry a lot of fluid and also to vary the width of line by varying the pressure on the brush when in use. Using these "sign painters" and "pin-striping" bruses makes all the difference in the world, although using them for freehand lettering and pin-striping work of professional quality does take considerable training and practice to master the proper techniques. Straight lines are far less demanding, requiring only a steady hand. It should also be noted that with brush work the qualities of the fluid, particularly its opacity, are very important. It is far easier to make a line in a single stroke that covers sufficiently. Having to go over it again with another coat, or more, makes a good job nearly impossible. (It's for this reason that the industry-standard brand of sign painters' and pin stripers' paint is called "One Shot." http://www.1shot.com/One-Shot/Home.aspx )

 

 

 

There are even types of mechanical pens that produce broken or "dotted" lines. By swapping various gears, patterns of dots, dashes, and combinations of both can be produced. While these pens are prized more by collectors of drafting instruments today, they are handy "users" for some modeling applications such as drawing "stiching" on sails.

 

 

 

 

 

It's important to note that ruling pens are never "inked" or "filled" by dipping the points into the ink bottle. Rather, the pen is "charged" by depositing a drop of ink or paint on the side of the pen points above the points so that capillary action draws the fluid between the inside surfaces of the points, filling the space between the points for about a quarter inch up from the points. Over-charging will risk "flooding" with ink running all over the drawing. Dipping the pen will over-charge it, as well as get ink all over the sides and promote ink running under and all over the straightedge or drawing curve used. Charging ruling pens with a drop of ink is the purpose of the small eye-dropper found in the cap of the classic Higgins drawing ink bottles. When ink was king, draftsmen used a clever mechanical inkwell for applying a drop of ink from the end of a spring dipped in the standard ink bottle with a single hand. These were once a common thing and now have become scarce as buggy whips. Should you have one, it's as useful today as it ever was if you are going to use a ruling pen. (See below)

 

How it works: The thumbscrew at the top of the "head" adjusts the depth that the tip of the spring goes into the ink in the bottle, which drops as the ink is used up over time and its level drops. The dipped spring sheds all surplus ink until the tip of the spring stops dripping ink. At that point, touching the side of the pen against the end of the spring causes the correct amount of ink to flow by capillary action into the space between the blades of the pen points.

How it's used to ink a pen with one hand.

Ruling pens must be kept clean and dry when not in use. Their points need to be sharpened when they dull if they are to draw sharp, accurate lines. (Many types of paper are remarkably abrasive.) Sharpening instructions can be found in most old high school "mechanical drawing" textbooks or on line.

 

I expect this is more information than most would have interest in on the subject of ruling pens and deserves an "Okay, Boomer!" but if anybody has their grandfather's drafting instruments kicking around, you'll be surprised how useful they can be in modeling if you know what they are and how they were used. If they are in good condition and of high quality, as most professionals instruments were back in the day, they are probably worth a few bucks and so not something to toss in a junk drawer and leave to be kicked about, or given to the kids to play with. (Then there was the fine ivory-handled ruling pen I found a friend's wife using as a "spear" to fish cocktail olives out of the bottle...  )

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by Bob Cleek

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Wow, I’m left speechless (or wordless?) Thanks for the deep dive (or perhaps, more accurately, the tip of iceberg)!

 

Bob, how did you become so interested in this corner of the world?

[druxey]

Oh, my! That takes one back down memory lane. I agree that sword stripers take considerable practice to use well, and I've never used them at model scale size. The specialized double bow pens are fun to use! 

[Bob Cleek]

27 minutes ago, EricWilliamMarshall said:

Wow, I’m left speechless (or wordless?) Thanks for the deep dive (or perhaps, more accurately, the tip of iceberg)!

 

Bob, how did you become so interested in this corner of the world?

Well, I loved "mechanical drawing" class in high school. They actually taught it as a trade skill back in the days before "CAD" came along. It then became another skill in my "bag of tricks." I enjoyed building and designing stuff and used it frequently, but never for a living. I loved the instruments, but never could afford anything other than a basic "student" drawing set.

 

Some years ago, I decided I wanted to acquire a planimeter (an instrument that mechanically calculates the area of irregular plane surfaces) to calculate displacement on a boat I was designing. ("Playing with" was more like it!) I started by Googling "planimeter" and identifying which were the best models in my price range, then moved on to eBay from there to see what was available. To my amazement, eBay was flooded with technical drawing instruments, many even "new old stock." Among these were some of the finest drawing instruments ever made, with which I'd become acquainted in my school days, but only from a distance. There was a Keuffel and Esser store in San Francisco where I grew up and I'd go in and drool over the professional-quality hand-fitted German silver top-of-the-line Paragon line of products. Back then, I could only dream of buying instruments like that, but I discovered them on eBay in mint condition, or even new, for really what was to me now "spare change" prices! I started with a Paragon planimeter and a basic set of Paragon drawing instruments. After that, I'd pick up whatever struck my fancy if the price was right and pretty much bought one of all the best drawing and measuring instruments Keuffel and Esser ever made. There are still some really rare things that I'll never pay what the serious collectors will on eBay, but I'm quite content to now own the instruments I only wished for as a kid. I guess it's a lot like the old farts that buy the muscle cars they couldn't afford when they were young, except with me it's tools!  

 

It just became a sideline hobby and I've found it very enjoyable. The old instrument catalogs are on line and I learned a lot from reading them. None of the good quality stuff is made anymore and even very little of the cheap junk is manufactured today at all. If the on-line auction prices are any indication, the prices are going up and my widow will enjoy the return on appreciation when she sells off my stuff, but even now, the stuff is amazingly cheap when considering what it cost new. I did a calculation some time back and figured that my basic Paragon drawing set sold new in today's dollars adjusted for inflation for about $750 and I picked it up in mint condition for about $150.  I haven't seen one in that condition in a few years, but I'm guessing now they'd be bringing around $250 or so, at least. Even K&E's mid- and lower-range lines are better than anything that can be bought new these days and they sell for a lot less than the highly collectible Paragon stuff. It's a great time to score some "user" instruments if anybody's interested. I use mine all the time on the drawing board when building models.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Bob, thanks for sharing! That is a window into a world I had never given much thought to (and have just spent several hours online wandering through parts of that world). The pen I used is from an old set my parents had.

 

There is such a wealth of technology that hidden or near lost, once a new technology comes along. I have a set of molding planes, which is what was used before routers came to wood working. They are more adaptable and safe enough that my little kids could make moldings for our porch rails, when I fixed our porch. 

 

I noticed there here are some folks using these drafting tools on model trains as well. I had to just stop myself from looking at ever more items on eBay! I’m a sucker for beautifully made old things.

 

Thanks for widening my world!

[Bob Cleek]

The above appears to be a Keuffel and Esser Anvil line one-bow compass set. It's a quality set just below the Paragon line. It would likely bring less than $50 on eBay and is a bargain at that price.  Below is a Paragon three-bow compass set in comparison.

 

 

 

 

And a ten inch Paragon decimal-scaled proportional divider.

 

 

The major differences between the various product lines is the type of "union" or joint at the hinges of the large compasses and dividers, which is important for wear and accuracy, and the fact that the top end lines are hand-machined from solid billets of rolled German silver and all the instrument parts bear matching serial numbers, rather than being cast or stamped. This makes a big difference in "fit and finish." Note that the Paragon large divider also has an adjustment screw on one leg to permit fine adjustment of the width measured, which is an "extra" feature. I find I use these two items the most in ship modeling, together with my Copenhagen ships' curves and French curves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice tools make their use a special pleasure. As these once common tools pass from general circulation into the world of the collectors, there's still a window of opportunity for those of us who still have a real use for some of them to obtain them at a price we can afford. 

Edited November 25, 2019 by Bob Cleek

[Dziadeczek]

I'd rather paint the moulding strip first, off the model, and then carefully glue it to the model - this way the paint job is perfectly straight without any blobs and unevenness.

[wefalck]

I knew most of the drawing instruments presented above and have several sets, one was given to me, when I started in secondary school and it is still in mint condition, the others I inherited.

 

However, I never came across the Barch-Payzant lettering pens, they must be an US American speciality. In Germany we used for this what would be translated as 'funnel pens'. They are indeed tiny funnels that can be attached to a penholder in a way to keep the pipe of the funnel vertical on the paper. They were made in standard diameters to fit lettering templates. A thin wire ran through the pipe to keep it from clogging. They were essentially the forerunners of the technical drawing pens with an enclosed ink-reservoir or cartridges.

[Bob Cleek]

1 hour ago, wefalck said:

I knew most of the drawing instruments presented above and have several sets, one was given to me, when I started in secondary school and it is still in mint condition, the others I inherited.

 

However, I never came across the Barch-Payzant lettering pens, they must be an US American speciality. In Germany we used for this what would be translated as 'funnel pens'. They are indeed tiny funnels that can be attached to a penholder in a way to keep the pipe of the funnel vertical on the paper. They were made in standard diameters to fit lettering templates. A thin wire ran through the pipe to keep it from clogging. They were essentially the forerunners of the technical drawing pens with an enclosed ink-reservoir or cartridges.

In the US, the pen points your describe were marketed by Keuffel and Esser under the their trademark "LEROY Lettering System." (The "LEROY" was always written in capitals, but I don't know why.) K&E manufactured a huge number of templates in various sizes and fonts for use with a pantographic planchet that traced the letters inscribed on the template and inked the letters with the pens you describe. The system later used Rapidograph technical pen points instead of the "funnel pens" when those came on the market. (See below.) There were a variety of planchets available. some were adjustable to yield slanted letters and others to vary the size, height, and/or width of the letters on the template.The LEROY system was the most popular lettering template system in the US in the 20th Century. They are still easily available on eBay. The most common templates, by far, were the those in the standardized ISOCP engineering lettering font and these were provided in the boxed LEROY sets (below.) (In the last half of the 20th Century, the US government required all engineering drawings submitted to them to be lettered with the LEROY ISOCP font.) There were, however, templates in nearly every font imaginable, including Greek, Cyrillic, and other foreign alphabets. There were also templates for making musical notation, electronic schematic drawings, cartographic symbols, and the like. Keuffel and Esser also had a custom template service that would produce templates of corporate logos, individual signatures, and anything else a customer wanted. The manufacture of the LEROY templates was actually quite technically involved and K&E's patents on that process made the LEROY products some of the most profitable in their line for many years. (A fascinating monograph on the history of the LEROY system and the innovative machines developed to manufacture them can be found here: http://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KELeroy/LeRoy_Production/LeRoy_Soper.pdf I suppose you'd have to be an engineering wonk to be all that interested in it, but anyway...)

 

I have no doubt that the LEROY pens were made by the same company in Germany that made the "funnel pens" mentioned above. With a very few exceptions, most all of the mechanical drawing instruments sold by US retailers in the "Golden Age" of manual drafting, Keuffel and Esser and Dietzgen being the largest, were manufactured on contract by German instrument making companies and branded for the retailers selling them in America. There were a few English, Swiss, and French instrument makers whose products were sold on the American market in the 19th Century, as well, but the Germans were the world's preeminent instrument makers, as the German names of the  immigrants that founded the American companies indicate. Interestingly, when WWI and WWII occurred, there became an instant shortage of drafting instruments which were essential to combat engineering, land, air, and sea navigation, cartography, and artillery ballistic calculations. K&E responded to this shortage by developing an easily machine-manufactured line of instruments for wartime production and turned out a huge number of their "MINUSA" line of instruments which often appear on eBay and other collectors' markets today. Interestingly, "MINUSA" stood for "M-ade I-n USA." The fact was, though, that when it came to technical instrument making and optics, Germany set the standard for the world at least until the aftermath of WWII. 

 

Today, we lament the demise of these once great instrument companies and blame it on the development of CAD software, but really, CAD only finished the job. The mortal wound was the development of electrostatic copying technology. The companies had enjoyed great profits from their copying systems lines, beginning with blue print technology and moving forward up to the advent of the Xerox Machine, with which they simply could not compete. They limped through the sixties and seventies, but the decade of the eighties saw the end of all of them.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2019 by Bob Cleek

[wefalck]

In Germany we used the funnel-pens directly with the templates. The templates had sort of rails above and below, which lifted them a bit above the paper and also allowed them to be aligned precisely on the horizontal ruler of your drawing machine. There is an ISO/DIN norm for the lettering and this standard lettering was mandatory for technical drawings. I think this 'font' is still used in CAD programs.

 

For free-hand lettering there were/are also a wide variety of pen shapes. One form had small plates at the end, so that you were able to write with a defined line-width, but unlike the Barch-Payzant lettering pens, they cannot be run along a straight-edge.

 

In art-class in my first year of secondary school we learned a bit how to work with such pens and ink.

 

The area around Nuremberg specialised in making drawing instruments and materials. The Black Forest area was another area of instrument makers and precision machine tool makers concentrated also there. Many, indeed, seem to have produced not only their own branded products, but unbranded ones for the US American market, where they were labelled by the importers. This ended particularly with the on-set of WW2. This is an interesting piece of trade and manufacturing history ... but we begin to veer away from the subject of painting stripes ...

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Very cool snazzy technology! A bit like ships we model...

 

I finished the model - that is to say, there this more to improve but I have made it to the end of the instructions and I’m ok moving on to the next project. Many thanks for everyone’s time, insights and sharing. (I’m now poking about looking at drafting sites as well). Included are a couple of photos (although I cleverly damaged it while setting up the photo). The line work does not distract from the whole effect.