Drafting linen

[GreenTwin]

This is where I have purchased "vellum" in the past.
They call it "plasticized cotton", "modern vellum", or "paper vellum".

It is good stuff; takes a lot of abuse, and is not affected by moisture/sweat/etc. very much.
You can get it wet and it will not degrade.

You can iron it if it gets wrinkled.

Paper vellum is translucent, so good for tracing over other drawings.
The translucence was important because you ran the vellum through the blue-line reproduction machine on top of photo-sensitive paper.
Normal paper is not translucent enough to work in the blue-line machine.

The trick was to turn on the blue line machine, and then hold your breath long enough to make a print, so the amonia fumes did not destroy your lungs. Generally your eyes would burner pretty good if you had to make more than one print.

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[ChazzC]

Hi,
You mention 'pounce' is that similar to ground pumice that we used in our drawing office in the UK.

We never called it 'vellum' just linen. Real vellum is made from part of an animal skin.

TerryD

Pounce​

​

noun​

• 1.a fine resinous powder formerly used to prevent ink from spreading on unglazed paper or to prepare parchment to receive writing.

From the same source:

Vellum​

​

noun​

• 1.fine parchment made originally from the skin of a calf.
• 2.smooth writing paper imitating vellum.

The "vellum" I have used is basically a heavy gauge tracing paper (about the thickness/weight of baking "parchment," usually yellow-ish tan, which may be why folks called it vellum. Many architects call it Bum Wad, and if you do a search for "Bum Wad" one of the results is this:

Bienfang Bumwad (sketch tracing rolls)​

It appears that all Vellum is Parchment, but not all Parchment is Vellum. If you really want more discussion: The New Antiquarian.

 

[Zeb]

I've used mylar similar to this. It's very stable for J size at very long lengths.

What was the thread count on the linen? Nevermind, looks like a pulp process that I was unaware of.

For those of you who have used drafting linen, is it similar to Arches cold press paper (smooth kind)? It's 100% cotton instead of linen and they use gelatin instead of starch. I spend a buck per sheet for it. Not cheap but really nice to work with.