These are all over the web, but maybe you never thought of using one in woodworking:
(looks funny in the browser, but works fine after printing)
download and print off a few on regular paper on your best print resolution. In conjuction with spray adhesive, they are great for measuring inside curves (for the calculus deficient), or anytime you need a VERY thin measuring device on a flat surface.
Neat idea. Thanks.
Just be aware that most printers do not print exactly to scale, especially in the long direction on the paper (i.e., the direction that is perpendicular to the rollers in the printer), which is the direction that matters when printing this ruler out on anything other than a printer than can print 13" wide paper and up. So...after you print it out check it against a ruler that is known to be good.
Of course I got a metal ruler from a well know art & graphic design supply company and discovered that it was almost 1/16" off, so even metal rulers can be out of whack!
They're also one of Ikea's more useful products, and they're a great price !
It makes not a whit of difference as long as it is the only measuring device you use on a project .. or use a story stick and forego "rulers" entirely.
Actually most printers do print to scale."IF" the software instructs it to.
What I have seen when printing plans is that the same drawing printed twice will match up EXACTLY in the direction that is parallel to the rollers but that there will be subtle variations in the direction that is perpendicular to the rollers. We're talking in the range of 1/64" here so maybe I am just being too picky -- it mostly shows up when I am trying to tile a drawing and then tape together the pieces of paper, which shows up variations very starkly because lines going from one sheet to the next do not match up. What I have always assumed was causing the problem was the slight variations in the friction between the feed rollers and the paper. Since I am seeing variations between printouts of the same drawing printed on the same printer I rather doubt that this is a software or driver issue...
Handy to keep folded up in your wallet for use at any time. I've often used just a plain sheep of paper to estimate a dimension since I know the actual size.
On 2 Panasonic dot matrix printers, 2 Canon Ink Jet and 1 HP Ink Jet and using AutoCAD, I am always able to draw 1"=1" out put on tiled drawings. I used this on many occasions on all of these printers to produce exact templates to transfer designs to wood. Using index points to align the pages all lines meet up exactly and are exact in length. Perhaps you are not taking into consideration margins of the printers.
Good grief...not taking the margins into account would throw things off by a lot more than 1/64"! All I can say is that with the printers I have used I have seen the variations I have described over and over again and for the reasons I listed it is pretty clear that this is an issue with the printers not the computer.
At the least this should be sufficient to support the case that anyone using this ruler should double-check it against a known ruler (unless they plan to only use this ruler for a given job). Heck, it's good to double check any new ruler against a known ruler.
actually, I have one glued to the fence on my RAS, but I wasn't going to admit it here before you brought it up..
I've measured plenty of pieces in museums using ruled paper from the notebook I was writing in. Of course this is easier in the UK with feint ruling - our lines are printed light, but go the whole width of the page.
Not saying it's the case with the example you described earlier, but the moisture content of the paper from day to day can have affect one's results. (I did DTP for a few years.)
Simple typos can lead to the most amusing images. I'm thinking Philip K. Dick, here.
Isn't everyone's? A4, right?
Too much coffee: feint lines look like regular faint lines, but don't point where you think they do...
I've just laid my ruler on the photocopier and gotten something that works for rough measurement.
Tim Douglass
No - American paper (well Chinese paper as it is now) is often cheap, shiny with far too much filler, and ruled with black dotted lines that stop short of the edges. It doesn't look too bad, but it photocopies dreadfully.
If you're a fountain pen user it's getting hard to find decent journals - ink takes an age to dry on this shiny paper. I generally favour Moleskines, but they're a bit small. I should try some of the Lee Valley journals.
I have an "engineering notebook" which is a spiral-bound notebook with
1/4" grid graph paper for sheets. Works great for this sort of thing, and also for drawing up scale-drawings of projects. Even house-sized projects, come to think of it; the whole thing is drawn up by hand in one that I've got to find again "just because".Dave Hinz
If you all want a custom ruler, made up any way you want and rollable, you can create your own in Illustrator or other apropriate program, burn to disc and give it to a film house, who will output your file to film as a positive (black marks on clear film) for a reasonable cost. Much less than the precision metal rulers, and equally as accurate. These outputs are accurate in both dimensions and printed at 2440 dpi, the "dots" (laser exposed squares, actually) are barely discernable at
10x magnification. Since a ruler is so narrow, perhaps you can work a deal with them for a particularly long one, as they may be able to gang it with another job on a normally wasted margin of the film. These people prefer Illustrator, PDF or Quark files for output, but some can handle Corel and In Design as well. I have several of these in my shop, as well as a "protractor", 18" diameter, that I created for better accuracy in setting angles.Gary Graphic Artist (when I can get work!)
I always heard that too baaaaaad measurements. ;)
Never tried Lee Valley. I buy most of my stuff at:
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