Plans

[Terence Lynock]

Plans supplied as freebies in magazines have inbuilt problems that,unless you have worked in the printing or conservation of paper you wont know about.

Paper is machine made these days and usually the grain of the paper is in the length, some sheet may be made or cut for special purposes with a short (crossways) grain but very rarely, to keep bulk to a minimum freebie plans are usually on lightweight paper, this in itself causes the actual sheet problems in the folding which, if folded too sharply, causes the paper to split.

Lets look at a multi-fold sheet of plans with four folds, the first is generated across grain, the second down grain and so on, the first fold is of no consequence but where the second fold crosses the first you have a conflict of interests in that the outer layer has to stretch slightly to get around the one inside it, right where the two folds meet you have distortion of the paper fibres.

Now do another fold and you have an even bigger conflict as you now have sixteen pages, the last fold will give you thrty two pages or faces and wherever you have one fold crossing another you will have distortion to some degree causing bunching or over stretching of the paper fibres. The parts of the sheet outermost have to stretch around all those inside causing displacement and stretching right on the corners or meeting points of the folds.

 

With a magazine this doesnt matter, the paper is folded into a section, this section has another dropped over it then  another  dropped over then another to make  4x 32 pages  then the cover is added, finally the top and bottom and foredge is cut off on a three-knife guillotine as are all the folds, corners and all the problems disappear but as a plan stays in one sheet this doesnt apply.

 

badly stretched and distorted fold points can be treated to lessen the damage by damping the area then laying it on dry clean white paper toweling, then find your biggest beer mug and turn it upside down and place over the area and weight it down, leave it there until the paper fibres which now have softened binding agents to shrink and dry, once dry smooth down with a WARM iron not hot.

 

Finally once you have the damage minimised either store the plan flat or hanging in a plans cabinet, the other alternative is to dust with a mild alkaline dusting powder and store lightly rolled inside a acid free cardboard tube.

 

Some plans are printed on an off-white coloured paper with a slightly glazed finish which is applied by heated rollers during manufacture, this stuff is hard work as it tends to split if too tightly creased which happens if the folding machine roller pressure is too high, the crease is formed too sharply and the fibres are not capable of taking the strain so split especially where two creases or folds meet at 90 degrees, the only sure fire way to repair these for storage is TESA document repair tape available from Staples which is like 'Magic Tape' but has been around far longer in the archival industry, it is acid free and paper based not plastics like 'magic Tape' so will do the job with no fear of deterioration at a later date. 'Magic Tape' I would not trust to keep its qualities for twenty or thirty years unlike the German made TESA which as guaranteed

 

At the price of plans these days it pays to look after them properly, in good well maintained condition they are worth money, falling apart and turning brown and crumbly they are bin fodder ,

 

regards,       Terry

 

 

 

 

[Ernie]

Hi Guys,

I always get plans copied at the local architects print shop. It is very very cheap, and I use the copy to build from, and store the original, so that I can make even more copies

 

Plans are best kept flat, in a big plastic bag, like the ones you can get from dry cleaners. Currently mine are under the bed

ernie

[Andy Gates]

If I can, I roll my plans up for storage.

 

That way no creases to fail.

 

I also keep them in the cool and dark so the ink fade is retarded.

 

My biggest issue with magazine plans are the errors which come to lightduring building, especially if the plan is nearly 30 years old.

 

I have one from RCME around this age of a Bleriot, still tempted to try this one!

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]