Official Luthiers Forum!

The set of plans that I'm working from were bought from the classifieds, and were very creased, and starting to wear at the folds. They are 36"x48" OLF, four sheet plans, and a pain to deal with to go from one sheet to another without tearing them.
I bought four sheets of Tank Paper that are the same size as the plans to tape them to. Before I taped them down, I flipped them over, ironed them at cotton setting, and taped them down with packing tape.


Alex


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

_________________
"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Probably a dumb question but what is "Tank Paper"
Did a google search and came up with plans to make a tank out of paper.

_________________
Say what you do, Do what you say.

Not a dumb question, Dave, I should have been a bit more informative. Tank paper is the stuff that renovators use to protect floors, counter tops, walls, etc. It's pretty cheap at about $2.50 a sheet, and sturdy. I might add some grommets to the top corners so they will hang on the wall easier.

Alex

_________________
"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

A good way to get the creases out is to roll up the plans and subject them to high humidity, (a steamy bathroom works).
The paper will stretch 2% or so, keep that in mind if you're using the plans to cut out patterns.

_________________
A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

If there's a chance the paper will stretch I'd put some witness lines at a few places around the drawing.
I'm not sure how to describe what I'm thinking of other than a few lines spaced at 1 inch or 1mm.

_________________
Say what you do, Do what you say.

Good tips, Rodger and Dave! The #1 rule of paper is don't trust any measurement on it being to scale, and if it is a news paper, don't trust anything written on it to be true!

Alex

_________________
"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

There's no doubt the paper will stretch, the question is how much and when. There are stable drafting mediums, but paper isn't one of them.
It's made from wood, and inherites the hygroscopic nature. Paper is much more uniform than wood, and consequently behaves more predictably. It stretches most in the first 72 hours after it comes off the roll, we would tape sheets to the wall for a couple of days to prestretch them before starting drafting. The stretch factor is usually less than 3%, and back in the days when drafting was done by hand, it required great effort to produce work of that precision. I did work of that precision when I was younger, but when that level of precision was required, it was all done on a stable medium, like mylar or polyester film.

Witness lines are a good idea, but they need to be near the corners of the sheet, the further apart they are the easier it will be to see the difference. And there needs to be two sets, one across the sheet and one up and down the sheet. The stretch isn't the same in both directions, it's typically 3% along the roll and 1% across the roll. Of course that varies, but it's good ballbark numbers for typical drafting and printing paper.

_________________
A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon