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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Bowditch octant
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Nov 22, 13:43 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Nov 22, 13:43 -0500
Omar- If you are printing your scales in a laser printer, you may find errors caused by the laser process. The paper is "moist" from room humidity, and then gets steamed (literally) and pressed against the fusion roller. This causes enough physical change in the paper so that it may change in length, i.e. from the nominal 11" in US-letter sized paper, by plus or minus 1/32" to 1/16". In order to avoid this, you must use an engineering mylar or other non-paper material designed for laser printing. Some of the synthetic papers are actually latex based and no better in this regard. I'm not sure how Kimdura (similar to Tyvek) competes but would think it falls in between paper and mylar. With inkjet printers you have a different problem, the wet ink saturates the paper and on most printers you can see it visibly pucker and distort while it is coming out. This distortion is local and uneven, varying with the ink. Again, a non-paper product is the answer, and any of the synthetics should do. Since there is no fusion drum to steam them, there's a wider range of materials to be found. Craft supply stores often have a wider range than office supply stores, with special materials for stenciling, etc., made of more durable or thicker stock. Setting the inkjet to "draft" or "economy" mode so it uses less ink may also help. For the best precision in "custom printing" one offs, we used to work directly with digital film imagesetters, which produce black image on transparent film stock. That's very stable in all dimensions, but might cost you $5-10 per page from a local imagesetting service bureau. (May shift a bit if you get it wet though!)