Over the last week I’d tried making a set of small rulers and straight edges I could keep in notebooks of various sizes.  I’ve got a big heavy sketchbook, a thin college rule composition notebook with several DIY augments, and a very small sketchbook about 4″ square.

Just four notebooks

My idea was to make small credit card / ID card sized rulers, print them on paper, and then laminate them to keep in one or more notebooks.  My first attempt a few days ago was serviceable1 – but lacking in aesthetics and functionality. (I’ll show some pictures below…)

This morning I saw a Mastodon post by @concretedog234 demonstrating his use of a homebrew lasercut protractor.

@concretedog’s lasercut protractor

Inspired by @concretedog’s work, I embarked upon building my own in Inkscape, using some printable ruler I found online.  A few design progress pics:

 

 

Initial design, sized to fit in a small card lamination pouch

 

Four of the designs, plus rulers, on a sheet of paper

The basic process I used was:

• A few concentric circles for the overall protractor outline and semi-circle cutouts
• A longer 10 degree increment rotated 18 times (since it was a line at the top and bottom), a medium 5 degree increment rotated 36 times, and a short 1 degree increment rotated 180 times
  • Edit -> Clone -> Create Tiled Clones
    • Symmetry:  P1: simple translation
    • Shift:  make sure the exponent is “0”
    • Rotation:
      • Angle row/column:  0, 5 degrees
      • Rows/columns:  1 x 18
• Then added the rulers minus the numbers (just looked cleaner)
• Three clones of the result, printed on paper, cut one out, cut out the semi-circle windows and center, laminated, then cut out the semi-circle windows and center again, ran it through the laminator for good luck

 

 

 

Laminated and cut, side by side with prior janky version

 

Laminated and cut, side by side with prior janky version

 

Finished protractor side

 

Finished ruler side

In an ideal world, I would also have created the ruler marks using @concretedog’s guide … I just hadn’t seen it until I got around to finishing this project. :)

1. built from PrintableRulers.net [↩]
2. Someone I’ve been following for years and have come to think of as a parasocial friend [↩]
3. Is following a fellow maker a parasocial relationship if you interact with them? [↩]
4. Parasocial could be pre-friendship? [↩]