Slide Rule

I made my father a cardstock slide rule for Christams last year (2008). Although I have given the physical slide rule to my father I am sharing what I can of its construction here.

The slide rule was originally created in SVG by a Perl script. I then resized it to be fit for printing in Inkscape, and printed it on cardstock. All of the parts of the slide rule other than the two stators and the slide were made by hand on extra cardstock and transparency. The structure is similar to that of PASCSR's: it has a top stator, a bottom stator, a base, a slide, and a cursor. The base is a piece of cardstock the size of the slide and the two stators, and the stators are attached to either edge of it. The slide goes between them, although it took some very fine sandpaper to make it move smoothly. The cursor is a narrow piece of carstock a little taller than the base, with four spacers (half of the difference in height between the base and the the cursor each), stacked in pairs on either end. On top of it is an inkjet transparency, with a thin line printed down the center of it, cut to the size of the cursor. Everything is held together with double-sided scotch tape.

The slide rule has six scales on it: R1, R2, CI, C, D, and DF. I won't go into detail about how to use the slide rule here, but I can refer you to Eric's Slide Rule Site which was very helpful to me.



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