How do I stop old drawings curling up?

I have the responsibility for procuring spares for a particular make of (pre-war) motor car. I am the current custodian for the old factory drawings dating between 1925 and 1939. They are drawn on a different types of paper and there are no standard sizes but they range between A4 and A0 but none of them are exact.
I am currently having the ones I need redrawn on CAD for manufacturing purposes, drawn to accommodate current material specs and adding some details that have arisen over the years of manufacturing experience. I can scan them in, piecemeal if needed, on an A3 scanner to send then to the draughtsman.

One of my predecessors had all the drawings copied onto a polyester film. Unfortunately they have been stored rolled in tubes for many years.

This is my problem, how do I make them stay flat. Can I iron them, if so should I use steam, what temperature etc. Is there a better way?

If anybody out there has over come this problem I would be grateful to know.

I intend to store them flat in the future. I have actually had some under a weighted board for several months but it hasn't solved the problem the blessed things still try to roll up from both ends.

Ultimately, for archive security, the originals will be all scanned and held on disc. Firstly I need to get them in some semblance of order.

Personally I would not try to get them to stay flat, just store with a weight on top and leave them at that. Don't iron polyester film

Rather than faff about with trying to get them on an A£ printer with the risks of damage get them scanned in as full sheets, most decent reprographics shops will be able to do it and then store as pdf files.

I'm sure you will find that most are to standard sheet sizes but at that age they won't conform to A sizes, far more likely imperial like elephant, double elephant or cut of a standard 42" wide roll.

J

I used to have  four small leather pouches filled with lead shot to hold the corners flat on the board. Curled up paper/ film drawings are a fact of life I am afraid, Rolling them in the opposite direction helps, sometimes!! Storing them flat is much better, as there is less risk of damaging the old prints as you access them.

Edited By mike T on 24/07/2012 19:45:41

Isnt that why drawing offices had those great big chest of drawers, with multiple thin drawers?

to keep the drawings flat of course.

One thought is that you could laminate the drawings and that would keep them flat but I have never seen laminate sheets bigger than A3.

would the heat of the laminating machine damage the drawings.

Clive

It may be that the paper drgs. have got drier because of central heating, in which case they could be "misted" and then stored flat under some weight, but I wouldn't risk it without a good knowledge of the paper. The tracing paper used can shrink dramatically with changes in moisture. Large drgs. eg. elephant, often stored vertically hanging from clips.

Hi Andy

Yes, in a previous life, I had a job where I needed to access large prints constantly. Even when kept in the proper plan presses the problems still occured. You say :-

"Ultimately, for archive security, the originals will be all scanned and held on disc. "

Sounds like that is the answer to all your problems but I'm afraid there are snags there too.

Try entering something like " Life of DVD-R" into your favourite search engine and you will see the problem. As a starter you can click here

I guess nothing is forever! ( Some posts give the life of CD-R at 5 years!!)

Regards

Norman

Edited By NJH on 25/07/2012 09:47:03

Hello Andy, I have worked as a draughtsman for the past 40 years and have had to store thousands of drawings. The horizontal plan cabinets are good for storing drawings, especially those which are used often but they can still be damaged by constant use. The best way is to have them professionally scanned and use a copy for day to day use. They can then be printed as full size, A3 or A4 for easy reference. If you damage a print just print it again. Store your originals in a sealed tube in a dry place. I have tried photographing them myself but you do not get the quality of scanning.

Drawings should be scanned in TIF4 format to get the best quality prints. Jpeg format compresses the image to reduce the file size and expands them when opened for printing. Each time a jpg image is opened and saved it loses resolution quality because of the compression algarithm used.

Copy the scanned files onto DVD not CD. DVD's are more resistant to damage. Make several copies as backup in case something goes wrong.

I recently had a number of A1 size drawings professionallyscanned for about $3 (Australian) each. Laminating an A1 print was about $5 each.

Hope that this was useful, Paul

Lots of lovely advice chaps, thank you.

However I suspect I have not really explained my immediate problem adequately.

It is well understood that old fashioned drawings are the best archive. That is what they are and will remain, well looked after. Old drawings are however fragile hence the plan to put them onto a disc

Somebody thought similarly in the past hence the copies on polyester. Electronic copies are however much easier to deal with, hence the new plan to put 'em on disc

Again the potential impermanence of stuff on disc is understood.

I am, however, as well as archiving them, working with them in the 21st century and as we all know a CAD drawing can be whizzed through cyberspace at the greatest convenience..

My immediate task is, a physical one, sorting the drawings into some sensible order and finding out which ones, if any, are missing.

What I neglected to mention is the fact that I have over 1000 drawings! I have a flat plan filing chest. I have a filing index that sorts into groups. The drawings are currently not filed entirely in index order or by group
The mere physical act of placing each drawing into the appropriate drawer of the plan chest is hindered by plans wanting to curl up as you put them in the drawer. It is at this point damage can occur. Weighting them is fine until you have drawings of differing sizes......................
Hence my desire to get them under control.
Holding them under a weighted board doesn't work(fast enough maybe)

The principal problem is with the polyester film copies.

So far reverse rolling looks like the best bet. Would raised temperature speed things up .

One of the problems of flat plan chests is leafing through the drawings to find the one you are looking for. My current idea (having flattened the beggars) is to interleave thm with brown Kraft paper with a filing tab on the edge to lead direct to the drawing of choice. As far as I can make out Kraft paper has a neutral pH.

Any views on this? Is there some thing commercially available to do this job for me?

Edited By ANDY CAWLEY on 25/07/2012 17:41:40

At work we keep paper maps in a huge cabinet where they hang off brown card strips glued along one edge. The hand coloured 1:10,000 OS maps are now 30 years old and of sigificant historical value (the first comprehensive habitat survey of a large urban area ever competed). Although all the data has been digitised to GIS polygons, they have never been digitally archived

Neil

Hi Andy,

Filing a thousand drawings is a little harder than a few hundred.

A horizontal filing cabinet is not suitable because the drawings have to be lifted to get at the individual drawings. They can easily get damaged by doing this.

A vertical plan cabinet is a better option. Each drawing is hung from its edge on a set of pins. One set is attached to the back of the cabinand another from the front hinged door. It is easy to flick thru them to find the one you want. Self adhesive plastic strips are available for attaching to the drawing sheets. Do a search on the internet for "vertical plan cabinet" . You should be able to pick up a cabinet for a song as the they are outdated because everyone is going digital. They will also stop your drawings fron curling.

Paul.

Hi, the company that I used to work for a few years ago had some of these, they were used for the original drawings which were done on semi-transparent paper (a bit like tracing paper)

As I remember, you could slide the drawings from the back pins to the front ones in order to select the drawing you wanted before opening the cabinet completely to remove the selected drawing for copying. Very easy to use and didn't take up to much space.

Regards Nick.

One of the main contaminants of paper since 1945 is radiation, as was first found out by X-Ray users in the 1960s, the film used to be wrapped in paper got from almost anywhere, and the films were getting fogged, now the paper is sourced in the southern hemisphere, and tested. I don't know if the radiation causes break down in paper, but a lot of modern paper does not seem to last well.Ian S C

Hi Paul,

That's our map cabinet!

neil