Bare or Full

Hi, MichaelG, I looked through all the issues I have of that volume and found nothing more of either of them, neither did I see anything else about bare or full. So maybe someone else might help.

Regards Nick.

Thanks for trying, Nick … much appreciated

MichaelG.

There is a mention of Bare and Full in the book "Model Engineering A Foundation Course" by Peter Wright on page 35 for those that have it

In the 70’s when I worked in a contract drawing office some local machine tool companies were still using there own draughting standards. They not only had there own unique standard parts but also there own tolerances. Being UK based they probably used something based on the Newal tolerance system but then developed it based on there experience and the machines used. Remember in those days many people stayed with an employer as could be seen by the number of names on the 25 and 50 year employment boards. A company I went to later had about a dozen or more boards of 50 year personnel. So many of these people would be used to the terms on a drawing and wouldn’t need it written down just inferred. Of course all that is gone now and I doubt we will ever see a fifty year employee, I only managed just short of 25 before redundancy struck for the third time. Once British standard limits and fits took over standardisation became the norm and the old ways were forgotten along with the people who used them.

Fifty years employment? I've always ever known of forty years, but I suppose it would have covered someone starting as an apprentice or office-boy at 15 and retiring at 65.

I very much doubt modern industry could function with that sort of internal standards by tradition. Blame Mr Whitworth and Mr. Maudsley for starting to break that insularity down!

.

Available on archive.org

Note that the two PDF versions are very different sizes

… and it shows in the quality of the pictures

MichaelG.

The company I work for has a 50 year employment award. There were a couple this year.
They started as apprentices. It is a bit odd somtimes when someone has never seen any other way of working. Our current chief engineer started as an apprentice.

Robert G8RPI.

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 15/10/2022 08:51:51

Appending "bare" or "full" to a dimension on the drawing merely pointed out that that particular dimension on that particular component needed to be a bit larger/smaller in order for the parts to function when assembled; it was just up to the maker how much to increase/decrease the nominal dimension to suit the parts' working.

Even today ME drawings are full of 1/4" shafts supposedly fitting in 1/4" holes - or if you're really up to date, 6mm shafts fitting 6mm holes... at least the bare/full dimension pointed you in the right direction as to which part to make larger/smaller. We all make our bits to suit our own bits - occasionally having to take extra care when making our bits fit somebody else's commercial fitting.

If you were to dismantle (say) half a dozen Simplexes built by different people, would you be able to reassemble six functional Simplexes by taking parts at random from the pile of components? Of course not.

People often moan in the Letters columns about ME drawings being rubbish - "They don't conform to National Drawing Standards and they're full of mistakes", they whine. But how many of the moaners have submitted a full set of drawings of (say) a traction engine for publication in the magazines, whereby all the dimensions are fully toleranced (using geometric tolerancing as well) so that the finished product is guaranteed to go together if made to drawing? And there are no omissions or errors with the dimensions? And a system is in place to update and correct all the errors/improvements/etc etc? No, I thought not.

I always take a set of drawings as a guide to building what ever it is and make mating parts where possible near the same time. This allows for differences between the drawing and what i have produced usually changing material and threads to metric. I will admit to quite a few mistakes over my working life in producing many thousands of drawings both hand and cad generated, no one is 100% right.

Those old drawings, particularly in ME, assumed the builder would use his own initiative to get the final fit and would know when to make a bushing a sliding fit and a flywheel a press fit etc etc. Thus most dimensions were given as nominal fractions of an inch.

But I have never seen the terms full or bare used on engineering drawings anywhere.

In the dim and distant days of my apprenticeship, in West Yorkshire the terms 'Bare' and 'Full' were not used,- - - - but the terms 'Shy' and 'Proud' were freely used in the toolroom and perfectly understood.

Regards Ian.