Printable scale rulers

[FlyingFish]

Does anybody know of a good source of printable scale rules - in particular I'm after a 1:32 scale or 3/8th" /ft scale?  

[Bob Cleek]

Google is your friend, or Bing, as the case may be in this instance: printable scale rulers - Search (bing.com)

 

       See:                          Printable scale rulers - Printable Ruler (printable-ruler.net)

 

                                       Printable Ruler - Free Accurate Ruler Inches, CM, MM - World of Printables

 

                                       9 Sets of Free, Printable Rulers When You Need One Fast (thesprucecrafts.com)

 

The catch with printable rulers is the ability of the particular printer to print the rule accurately.  In the first instance, most copiers and printers these days have a built-in "counterfeiting prevention feature" that prints a slightly off-size copy to prevent people from printing money. Others have less than sufficiently exact sizing scales. At best, if copying a scale, you have to fiddle a lot to adjust the sizing on the machine to get an exactly accurate copy.  These printable scales, being in digital format and not going through a copier, may well have overcome those limitations.

 

 

 

[FlyingFish]

Thanks Bob, couldn't see a 1/32 scale rule in your links... was I missing something?

[iMustBeCrazy]

1 hour ago, FlyingFish said:

Does anybody know of a good source of printable scale rules - in particular I'm after a 1:32 scale or 3/8th" /ft scale?  

I've added 1:32 to my scale rulers HERE. Bob's right, you may have to adjust your print scale using 'Custom' or the like.

 

[FlyingFish]

Craig, that's very helpful - thank you. I'll fiddle with the print settings.

[iMustBeCrazy]

6 minutes ago, FlyingFish said:

thank you

No worries Andy, you're welcome.

[FlyingFish]

Prints straight from the pdf to correct scale. Nice job Craig!

[Dr PR]

I want to repeat what Bob said - many printers do not print to scale. I had a HP laser printer that required a print scale of 1:1.043 to get it to print 1:1 on the paper.

 

1. Disable "fit to paper" option in the print dialog.

 

2. Set the scale to 1:1 (every printer manufacturer does this differently - too stupid to come up with a common method).

 

3. Create an image with a ruler scale in it that is known to be accurate. Best to create this with a CAD program and not a simple drawing program like Photoshop or MS Paint. Make the scale long enough to fit on the paper. For example, 8" horizontal and 10" vertical.

 

4. Print the test file.

 

5. Measure the printed ruler. Careful - the error may be small, but these errors can add up.

 

CAUTION: Use an accurate ruler to make the measurement. Many cheap rulers are just the approximate length. Use a steel machinist's rule if you have one, or measure with a caliper.

 

6. Calculate the error +/-. Divide the measured length of the printed ruler by what it is supposed to be.

 

7. Calculate the offset +/- necessary to make the print the right scale. For example, if a 10 inch ruler prints to 9.98 inches, set the print scale in the printer dialog to 1.1002 (or 1:1.1002).

 

8. Repeat steps 3-7 until it comes out right.

 

9. Write down the necessary scale correction for the printer (put it on a stick on not on the printer). If you can, set the "Custom" scale in the printer dialog.

 

10. Be sure to test this with a vertical and horizontal ruler in the printed drawing. Some printers are screwed up in both directions, and the only way to correct this is to create drawings that are skewed in both directions!

[Bob Cleek]

1 hour ago, FlyingFish said:

Thanks Bob, couldn't see a 1/32 scale rule in your links... was I missing something?

A 1:32 scale or a 3/8" to the foot scale? Or a 1/32" to the foot scale?   Truth be told, I didn't go looking for the specific scale you were asking about and just posted the sites that had printable scales. My bad! 

 

I neglected to mention that In addition to the internal copying errors issues encountered in printers themselves, printed scales also pose the risk of changing size along with relative humidity. It's not about being exceptionally anal-retentive about measurements, (that being a relative thing among modelers,) but rather, it's just that your measurements are never going to be any more accurate than your rule and errors are so often cumulative.

 

1:32 or 3/8" to the foot scale is a standard architectural drawing scale and it should be found on any standard architect's triangular scale. (Not to be confused with an engineer's triangular scale which is scaled decimally.)  Any modeler would be well-served by owning one. Buy one with decent scale engraving, not a pressed plastic job. You want an accurate scale. They aren't expensive and very commonly available. Get a decent pair of dividers to pick up your measurements from your rule while you're at it if you don't already have a pair. 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2023 by Bob Cleek

[mtaylor]

I have this one....  print... double check for accuracy.... adjust if needed and use it.  Has a bunch of the more common scales.

ImperialScales.pdf

[iMustBeCrazy]

25 minutes ago, Dr PR said:

Some printers are screwed up in both directions

And some printers are inconsistent, if you want accuracy use calipers and calculated conversions.

 

These rulers are useful for a quick check down to about 0.5mm (actual size) (about 5/8" at 1:32). Still, that's better than most people can cut by hand.

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

Bob,  I don’t know what your special requirement is that cannot be met by a triangular architect’s scale like Bob Cleek describes above, but here is another possibility.

 

BC (Before CAD) or more precisely before 3-D digital modeling, Engineers used to build models of industrial projects.  These were plastic scale models with structural steel, equipment, and piping.  The models were made from the project’s drawings and were used among other things to check for interferences.

 

I once had to make a “takeoff” of the piping for a coal gasification plant from one of these models so that we could order materials prior to issuance of the final drawings.  The model was located at the Engineer’s office.  The Engineer had several Steel Scale Tape Measures.  Unlike the architect’s scale, there was a separate tape measure for each scale.  These tapes made quick work of an otherwise tedious job.

 

If you can find one of these to the correct scale it would be ideal for ship modeling.

 

Roger

[FlyingFish]

11 hours ago, Dr PR said:

many printers do not print to scale.

Bob and Phil - too right! I've spent too much time 'calibrating' my printers. I recently changed to and Epson ecotank inkjet, and I have to say it's the easiest yet.

11 hours ago, Bob Cleek said:

printed scales also pose the risk of changing size along with relative humidity.

Yes, and the culmulative error thing is a problem. I seal mine in a lamination which seems to help. 

10 hours ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

These rulers are useful for a quick check down to about 0.5mm (actual size) (about 5/8" at 1:32). Still, that's better than most people can cut by hand.

That's true Craig, although knife cuts with a steel rule can be super accurate, and scissors can cut a pencil line in half with a steady eye - the trick is knowing where to cut!

8 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

If you can find one of these to the correct scale it would be ideal for ship modeling.

Exactly - imagine if they came in thin steel with an adhesive backing for attaching to building jigs? Now that would be exactly what I'm after!

Thanks all for your helpful replies.

[allanyed]

11 hours ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

If you want accuracy use calipers and calculated conversions.

To paraphrase two lines from the movie Titanic,

Molly Brown:   Well said Craig

Colonel Archibald Gracie"  Hear hear! 

Allan

Edited August 28, 2023 by allanyed

[Roger Pellett]

Bob,  the tapes that we used were retractable tape measures.  Alvin still sells one but only in 1/8 in and 1/4 in scale.

 

Another possibility would be one of the Plastic scales that were used in Drafting Machines prior to CAD.  These came in 12 in and 18in lengths; each scribed in two related scales, eg. 3/8 and 3/4 in.  They had aluminum attachments but these can be easily removed and the holes used for fastening to the workbench.  Google- Drafting Machine Scales and you will find them.

 

Roger

[Bob Cleek]

4 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Bob,  the tapes that we used were retractable tape measures.  Alvin still sells one but only in 1/8 in and 1/4 in scale.

 

Another possibility would be one of the Plastic scales that were used in Drafting Machines prior to CAD.  These came in 12 in and 18in lengths; each scribed in two related scales, eg. 3/8 and 3/4 in.  They had aluminum attachments but these can be easily removed and the holes used for fastening to the workbench.  Google- Drafting Machine Scales and you will find them.

 

Roger

For sure. The drafting machine scales are actually nothing other than regular scales with a couple of threaded holes to attach the clip for attaching them to the drafting machine arm. They were made in every scale imaginable. The common scales are still widely available on eBay. Some of the odd-ball scales may be a bit more difficult to find. They run around five or ten bucks a piece. Before they were plastic, they were made of metal, and before that, of boxwood and celluloid or ivory. The boxwood ones were the same scales that came in the fitted velvet-lined cases with eight, ten, or twelve scales in the box, each having one, or sometimes two scale markings on them. I've picked up quite a few such scales over the years. I have plastic and metal ones for my drafting machine and a fair number of the old K&E Paragon boxwood ones, although not a complete set of those. Sad to say, for quite some time when the beautiful old boxwood rules were plentiful, modelers encouraged probably by some article in a modeling magazine, snapped up as many as they could as a source of cheap boxwood and "recycled" them! I'd love to find a boxed set, but they are very pricey when they turn up on occasion. 

 

Only based on my own experience, I'd guess one person in ten, or less, knows that accurate professional scales are supposed to be used by picking up the distances with a pair of dividers (preferably a hairspring divider to make the most minute adjustments) and comparing them to the scale with the dividers. Most think they are like school rulers that double as straight edges and stand-alone measuring tools.

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Bob Cleek

[wefalck]

To be honest, I never understood why one wants a ruler with different scales.

 

You take a measurement off your drawings and transfer it to your material. If the scale of the drawing is different from the scale you are building in, you take your pocket calculator (or your smart-phone today) and multiply/divide with the appropriate factor.

 

These days I work in my 2D CAD from scanned-in drawings or my original drawings. Both, the scanned drawings and the original drawings, are scaled so that I can take direct readings of distances on the screen or get the dimensions, when clicking on a drafted item.

[AON]

In the old days, before CAD, when engineering drawings were by hand on a draughting (drafting) board with a Tee square, protractor, set squares, pencil and sanding board, or ink and pens on paper or velum, a draughtsman would be drawing hundreds of lines to scale a day, so he measured with the proper side of a triangular scale at the drawing scale. It saved time and was as accurate as the thickness of a pencil or pen nib allowed. Sure we had calculators. But not long before that we used slide rules. Good lord I hated those. Electronic calculators were a gift from the heavens.

Time is money... why else would they invent CAD.

Do you need them now?

Only if you don't want to spend the time calculating equivalents.

[Bob Cleek]

On 8/29/2023 at 4:06 AM, wefalck said:

To be honest, I never understood why one wants a ruler with different scales.

 

You take a measurement off your drawings and transfer it to your material. If the scale of the drawing is different from the scale you are building in, you take your pocket calculator (or your smart-phone today) and multiply/divide with the appropriate factor.

I believe the main reason is because, as I was taught, at least, you never take a measurement off your drawings and transfer it to your material. Not ever.

 

I suppose one might get away with doing that when modeling, and I've certainly done it on more than one occasion, but it is decidedly bad practice, or so we were taught. This is because the drawing can never be trusted and the stated measurement taken up; from a scale rule is always the more accurate measure. This principle is more critical in large-scale high-tolerance engineering drawings and much less so in small-scale architectural or cartographic drawings, but none the less, "best practices" dictate it in all circumstances.

 

It is also easier and faster when drafting or building to use a rule scaled to the scale you are working with than to mathematically calculate the scale equivalent from a full-scale rule. This is particularly so when one is not picking up lines from a drawing, but rather working from the stated measurements on the drawings. When working from stated measurements on the drawings, picking them up at the drawing's scale, or any other scale, is most simply and efficiently done by picking the stated distance up from the proper scaled rule. The fewer transitions of the physical measurement, the less opportunity for error.

 

Of course, in many instances, the need for a rule in any scale other than 1:1 can be eliminated by the use of a good decimally scaled set of proportional dividers.

 

 

[wefalck]

Bob, you are absolutely right, when it concerns 'modern' engineering drawings or builder's plans. Here, the dimensions (incl. tolerances and surface qualities) indicated are the reference for laying out parts.

 

I was referring to the 18th/19th century ship's plans or modern reconstruction drawing. There you normally find a scale drawn on the bottom of the drawing. The classical method would be to take off lengths with a compass and read the dimensions on the scale.

 

For many years now I am using a sort of digitised procedure: I import a scan of the drawings into my 2D CAD program, where the internal scale is set appropriately. I then redraw what I need in a different layer and can read the dimensions at model scale directly on the computer. I always work 'outside-in', rather than concatenating parts in order to avoid cumulative errors. For machining parts, I print out the part in a larger scale and note down the micrometer readings needed, based on the data in the CAD.

[Jaager]

3 hours ago, wefalck said:

I was referring to the 18th/19th century ship's plans or modern reconstruction drawing. There you normally find a scale drawn on the bottom of the drawing.

These drawings (NMM) are "living" organic objects.  Although now frozen electronic scans, they were not fresh off the drawing board when scanned.  Even spotting the original draftsman as an invariant machine, time, humidity change, temp, tears, folds affected the plans, and often not uniformly.  The bar scales can produce different results depending on where along its length a measurement is taken.

 

I use a downloaded 1:48 scale in Painter to verify or re scale a scan of plans.

An adjustment is necessary to make this scale useful in Painter.  The white background must be selected and CUT.  The layer must be transparent except for the actual scale.

 

I have yet to get an accurate 1:1 scan on my USB stick from a shop.  The PDF are ~ 60-70% enlarged.  They may be able to give me an identical printed copy, but a digital copy  for me to printout  is anything but 1:1.

 

The key with the printable scale was to get a direct printout of it to precisely match my K&E triangle. 

 

I do not care what the internal electron memory is actually using as long as a printout of it is accurate.

 

As far as physical measurements of model parts, a 12 inch metal digital caliper set to inch decimals does most of that.  I use the original real world feet/inches and use a Casio to divide by 60 to get my decimals.

I am fortunate in that my method does not require the Profile or WL  NMM printout plans to be precise as a whole.  I just need the exact data at each station as a slice.   It does not matter if time as made the intervals between stations variable.  What it actually turns out to be depends on the accuracy and precision of my Byrnes thickness sander product.    

Edited August 31, 2023 by Jaager

[wefalck]

Indeed, paper is a living object and shrinks/expands in different directions as e.g. a function of humidity. The only way to verify dimensional accuracy is to compare measurements against the drawn scale with data given numerically, either on the drawings themselves or through other sources. This requires that the measuring points of the numerical data can be uniquely identified in the drawing, which often is difficult.

 

"... exact data at each station" - this actually looks as if you were using chain measurements. Are you checking the overall accuracy then against any total length taken off the body plan etc. ?

[Roger Pellett]

My professional career involved engineering of piping systems mostly for large power plants.  These were huge assemblies, prefabricated in our shop and shipped to the field for erection.  Chicago area members may be familiar with the Chicago Bulls Red bridge spanning the Chicago River, next to the Vienna Beef wiener plant.  Each arch was shipped in two pieces over the Lakes by barge.  The arches were made from large diameter pipe (approximately 1 meter diameter) and bent in our shop.  The pieces had to fit exactly.

 

Practice in our engineering department was to only use known dimensions on drawings or to calculate dimensions based on known drawing dimensions.  Scaling and Slide Rule calculations were not permitted.  Instead, piping engineers and draftsmen used Smoleys Tables.  These were logarithmic based tables that shortened calculations.  As part of my training, I spent some time in the estimating department.  My boss, an old timer, expected the same degree of precision as the engineering department; Smoleys Tables and all.  Later, when I ran the estimating department, and later the Engineering Department,  electronic calculators were available.  I also allowed and used architect scales for cost estimating.  Their accuracy was good enough for this purpose.  The bridge above was drafted using CAD, that we began to use in the early 1990’s.

 

Naval Architecture presents some special problems as hull lines are not necessarily regular geometric shapes.  Given the same table of offsets, different Naval Architects using manual drafting techniques will each produce slightly different lines drawings.  This happens because of the need to produce “fair” lines.  When plotting offset dimensions, very slight differences in technique will produce slightly different curves.  Strictly s peaking there in no right or wrong answer as long as all curves are fair and all points match in the three views.  While CAD might seem to be a solution to this problem,  all CAD programs do not necessarily I use the same algorithm for fairing offset dimensions.  One Naval Architect has observed, “No matter what I feed into the computer, the hull comes out looking like a J-24.

 

Roger

[Jaager]

13 hours ago, wefalck said:

Are you checking the overall accuracy then against any total length taken off the body plan etc.

Actually, I am primarily using the Body plan - and the breadth  from that to determine the scale correction - I am aware that often the stated breadth is complicated (!).   I ignore the possible complication and scale to match anyway.

For the Profile -  I use this same correction then compare the bar scale (if there is one)  to my 1/4" scale - it usually matches.   But plan aberrations  often show up along the length.  The data that I take from the Profile is only the location of the rails, wales, decks  at each station.   The WL Plan is only used for the bow plug and the stern shape -  and for before~1780  the outline at the beakhead bulkhead.  Most plans stop 2-3 frames short of that.    I just use a single line at each station.  There is no lateral distortion that matters on the Profile.   I set the station intervals at what they are supposed to be.  

 

!! The complication with the stated breadth is that it often included the thickness of the bottom planking added to the frames.  This is not even the actual hull thickness at the breadth - the wale was usually there and the wales were at least twice the thickness of the bottom planking.  I suspect that the listed breadth was meant for use to calculate what was pretended to be the hull volume/displacement.   Since it was used as a comparison factor between ships, the real world accuracy did not matter.  It just required that every ship be calculated using the same formula.  The error factor cancelled out. 

Edited September 1, 2023 by Jaager