Way back in 1975-76, I was in college taking course work toward an Associates Degree in Mechanical Design Tech.
Much of this involved mechanical drafting classes. We're talking Old School mechanical drafting classes : T-squares, triangles, compasses, French curves, circle templates, lettering guides - the whole she-bang! I still remember the hours spent laboring over painstakingly accurate dimensioning and attention to pencil pressure so that the drawings would reproduce well on the blueprint printer machine.
In those days CAD was way off in the future.
I still have in my possession the entire set of drafting tools that I had purchased and used in those long-ago classes.
I recently dug out and dusted off this ol' box o' tools. I started pulling each item out of the box one by one to examine it. Then something weird happened.....
I watched in helpless horror as my hands, working independently of any attempts to control them, started working with these old drafting tools !!
In no time, I had a complete rendering of the Skeeter Eeter 3 staring up at me from the work table!
I am actually quite rusty at this hand-drafting business, but it all seemed to be come back to me very quickly Even though this could all be done much more efficiently on a PC, I have found this old-school way of doing things to be quite relaxing and satisfying.
So now, my new side project is to hand-draft the plans to all of my custom designed model rockets, past and present, scan them into PDF files, and post them here on the blog for anyone to use and enjoy.
Hey, I've got time on my hands...I'm retired!
Cheers!
