The thinner the glue used the better, and for this reason the best quality should be obtained, and care should be taken to keep the water supplied that is lost by evaporation. When it becomes necessary to replenish the glue-pot, the cake should be soaked in cold water for at least eight hours.
The removal of a drawing from the board presents no difficulty. A pencil line is drawn along the margin at a sufficient distance from the edge to be clear of the glue, and a pen-knife is guided along this line by a straight-edge not used for drawing.
As duplicates of drawings, especially if they be working drawings, are usually tracings, tracing paper is an important material in every drawing office. It is too well known to need a description. It is sold in various sizes, and of various prices, but the most usual sizes are 30 × 20 inches, and 40 × 30 inches, the price of the former being 3d. and that of the latter 6d. a sheet. It may also be purchased in continuous lengths of 24 yards, 42 inches wide, for about 8s., or if extra stout, 16s. A much less expensive mode of obtaining tracing paper is to make it one’s self. Common silk or tissue paper may be purchased in quantities at less than a halfpenny a sheet of the ordinary size. This may be prepared by placing a single sheet at a time flat upon a board or other smooth horizontal surface, and applying a mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine. This mixture should be composed of one part of oil to five of turpentine, and it should be applied with a small sponge. One coating is sufficient, and it should not be put on too thickly. Each sheet as prepared should be hung over a string stretched across the room to dry, and when all the clear oily marks have entirely disappeared, it will be ready for use. Five gills of turpentine and one of oil is enough for two quires of double-crown tissue paper. That tracing paper is best which is toughest, most transparent, and most free from greasiness. The continuous papers are more economical than those in sheets, because just the quantity required can always be taken from the roll. For durability, tracing cloth is to be recommended; it is sold in continuous lengths of 24 yards, and it may be had from 18 inches to 41 inches in width. That known as “Sager’s vellum cloth” is of excellent quality, both for transparency and strength.
Some kinds of drawings, such as specifications for Letters Patent, plans upon deeds, &c., have frequently to be made upon parchment. Special kinds of parchment can be obtained for these purposes. There is a kind made which is quite transparent, and which can be purchased cut to the Patent Office regulation size. As parchment has always a more or less greasy surface, before commencing to ink or to colour, it should be pounced over with pouncet of finely-powdered French chalk. Besides this precaution, it will be necessary to add a little ox-gall to the ink or colour.
Blacklead and carbonic paper are used to transfer a drawing. The former is prepared by rubbing thin paper over with a soft block of Cumberland lead; the latter by painting one side of the paper with lamp-black ground to perfect fineness in slow drying oil. Carbonic paper is used for coarser work than blacklead paper. Both may be purchased, properly prepared, at a trifling cost. The drawing to be copied is laid over the sheet of paper which is to receive the copy, with a sheet of the blacklead or carbonic paper interposed, and a tracer is passed with a light pressure over the lines. This method is mostly used to reproduce a drawing from a tracing, to obtain a finished copy from a rough draught that has become soiled and marked in designing, or to avoid errors or small alterations in the first drawing.
A very convenient kind of paper for small working drawings, or for sketching to scale, is that known as sectional paper. This is paper ruled into small squares to a given scale with pale ink. The spaces in ordinary use are 1⁄10, 1⁄8, 1⁄6, 1⁄5, and 1⁄4 inch. Thicker lines are drawn either to mark off the inches or to count the spaces in tens. With this paper, the scale may be dispensed with, as the eye is capable of subdividing the spaces with sufficient accuracy for practical purposes. Sectional paper is much used for sections of railway cuttings and embankments, as it affords a ready means of calculating the contents. It is also made up into sketching books and architects’ pocket-books, for which purposes it is peculiarly convenient.
Indian ink is used for all kinds of geometrical drawings. Being free from acid, it does not corrode the steel points of the instruments, and it preserves its colour unchanged. It is difficult to get the genuine ink, but even that, as it is imported from China, varies considerably in quality. For line-drawing, that is the best quality which will wash up least when other colours are passed over it. This quality is ascertained in the trade, though not with absolute certainty, by breaking off a small portion. If it be of the right quality, it will show a very bright and almost prismatic-coloured fracture.
The ink is prepared for use by rubbing it with water on a slab or in a saucer. The saucer should be quite smooth inside, so as not to abrade the ink. When mixed to the requisite thickness, which may be ascertained by drawing a line with a common pen, it should be covered to protect it from the particles of dust floating about the room. Ink should be rubbed up perfectly black, for pale ink makes the boldest drawing look weak. But after it has become black, any further mixing will only injure it by rendering it viscid. It is best to use it immediately after it is mixed, for if re-dissolved, it becomes cloudy and irregular in tone. The addition of a little ox-gall will make it flow more freely from the pen.
For erasing Cumberland lead-pencil marks, native or bottle indiarubber is sufficient; but for other kinds of pencils, fine vulcanized indiarubber is better. This, besides being a more powerful eraser, possesses the important quality of keeping clean, as it frets away with the friction of rubbing, and thus presents a continually renewed surface. Vulcanized rubber is also very useful for cleaning off drawings.