Back in high school, one of the subjects we had to take in year 8 was technical drawing. I can remember thinking to myself, why am i learning this rubbish, its not something that I am ever going to use. But alas, here we are and I am in need of being able to draw some semi accurate plans on at least A3 paper for some things I have going on at the moment.
Now i know I can do this on a computer using CAD, I have various software already on my computer to do just that very thing and I am competent in using it. However, I have no way of printing them out on A3 paper and scaling them to A4 is not the best option either because its not all that accurate. I need the person reading these plans to be able to measure 1cm on the page and have them translate that into 1m or some other notional measurement.
And so I went looking for a drafting set, i know my kids had them when they were at high school, but it seems they have all been moved on also. Looked online and well, no so cheep. So i figured making one would be the way to go. I have most of the materials here already, it was just a matter of buying a sheet of MDF, buying some set squares and mechanical pencils and making a drafting board and T-Square.
$20 later and an hour of my time and bingo bango boombo we have an A3 drafting set. How accurate is it? Well, its about as accurate and the carpenters speed square that I used to make it and the factory edge of the MDF sheet. In the vertical its a couple of tenths out as you can see from the parallel lines, and in the horizontal, not shown, its about 1mm over 460mm, good enough for the kinds of girls I go out with as they say.
I have enough adjustment in the T-Square to take that difference out, but i do not have a square accurate enough to do that. Carpenters speed squares are not the most accurate of things and I do not have an engineers square. Though I am going to buy one now and then make some other squares to use from it. I have a bunch of aluminum here. All in all, this came out pretty neat and now I just need some A3 paper and I am good to start drafting.
Ha… 4 years of pencil & paper drafting (draughting?) in high school. One of the machinists at the last job liked the old school drawings I’d give him.