{"id":42406,"date":"2024-07-15T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=42406"},"modified":"2024-07-08T15:30:57","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T22:30:57","slug":"writing-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/writing-paper\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Once a week we\u2019ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because\u00a0the possibilities they inspire are new.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Water-resistant writing pads<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Rite in the Rain Notebooks<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether you\u2019re a hiker, biker, backpacker, camper, naturalist or simply someone who\u2019s ever been caught in the rain, you\u2019ll treasure these classic all-weather notebooks. The cover is Polydura and the pages are made with a substrate, giving the paper a wax-y feel. The effect: water beads off them, meaning no pulpy mess and no bummer over any lost thoughts or data. They are not a new invention by any means. Back in the 1920s, they were developed for Pacific Northwest loggers. These days, the manufacturer makes both bound and spiral bound books in an impressive array of sizes and types (e.g birding!). I keep a pocket-size, 24-page, staple bound mini-book in the small pack I take cycling and hiking. In the event of a downpour, all my ah-ha moments are safe. If you plan to be in really harsh conditions and want to go the extra mile, you might try one of their all-weather pens. Note: I have not used them \u2014 a pencil or standard ballpoint does the trick for me. \u2014Steven Leckart<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Analog copy\/paste<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Saral Transfer Paper<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I start a new painting, I usually draw what I want in Adobe Illustrator, and then transfer a printout of that drawing to canvas or board to paint. I\u2019ve tried opaque projectors, but the image is faint (at least on the el-cheapo projector I use) and I don\u2019t really have room to set it up. I\u2019ve also tried using a piece of paper that I\u2019ve rubbed pencil or charcoal on, but that produces a blurry line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like an idiot, it wasn\u2019t until recently that I considered the possibility that there might be a transfer paper for artists. Of course, there is one. It\u2019s called Saral Wax-Free Transfer Paper, and it works like a dream. It comes in five different colors, but I can get away with blue and white. It leaves a clear, thin line that erases easily and doesn\u2019t mess up the color of the paint I use. I\u2019m already hooked on it for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Saral, they\u2019ll send you free samples in all five colors. \u2014 Mark Frauenfelder<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Better graph paper<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Whitelines<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone doing technical or design work has burned through reams of graph paper. I\u2019m a designer, and I use Whitelines to do technical drawings in accurate scale, which are then turned into 3-D models and die tooling diagrams. Whitelines is the best graph paper I have ever worked with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concept is simple and powerful. Ordinary graph paper is paper with a graph of lines printed on it in a light color, often blue or gray. Whitelines is paper with a very light gray grid of squares printed on it. The graph is unprinted, hence, white lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is genius. Pen strokes, and even pencil, are startlingly clear against the background. The distracting visual noise of a printed graph is gone entirely, while retaining the precision and ability to see scale, which is graph paper\u2019s reason for being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been using Whitelines extensively for the past few months, mostly for technical drafting on the MakerBeam project, an open source metal building kit like Meccano for the Arduino set. The grid is 0.5 centimeter pitch, perfect for working on a metric standard. With ordinary graph paper, pencil lines are close in color weight to the lines themselves. When scanning pencil marks on ordinary graph paper, the pencil lines often vanish completely. With Whitelines, I can scan a pencil sketch, if I\u2019m satisfied with it, without having to go back over it with pen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Available in A4, A5 and pocket sizes, as tablets, spiral bound, perfect and hardbound, both lined and graph. Better graph paper makes better drawings, and this is genuinely better graph paper. \u2014 Sam Putman<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Custom-printed graph paper<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Free Online Graph Paper \/ Grid Paper PDFs<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK, so I wanted to sit down and workout a grand plan for my new garden, so I figure a pencil and some graph paper is the way forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just finding some simple 2mm graph paper with 1cm semi bold and 2 cm bold turned out to be a near impossible task. Then I discovered the Graph Paper PDF Generator at incompetech.com .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It does plain paper, lined paper, multi width, hexagonal, even semi-bisected trapezoid! All completely customizable. And it\u2019s free! \u2014 Mark Coffey<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Notes under water<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Shower Slate<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever have an idea in the shower and have no way to record it\u2026and then it\u2019s lost forever? I use a \u201cDive Slate\u201d, a small (~4\u2033x6\u2033 ) sheet of sturdy white plastic with a plain old fashioned golf pencil attached. They\u2019re cheap (around $5-$8), available on the net at various dive shops, fit nicely behind the soap holder or hung in the shower and work well; they\u2019re meant to be written on underwater by divers, so unless you shower under Niagara Falls, your thought will be captured until you erase it. \u2014 Vincent Crisci<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 95<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2387],"tags":[2388],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42406"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42407,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42406\/revisions\/42407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}