Pre Autocad

[Lewill2]

Papaw, The pin on the lower right of the stylus goes in the slot on the lettering guide. The pin on the lower left goes in the letter you want to print. The pen or pencil lead goes in the upper left hole. The whole scale needs to rest on a T square, or parallel, Line the stylus up and trace the letters to spell the words you want. The lower left and upper left points adjust wider to put a slant on the lettering.

[ron darner]

For a very long time, the only brand of lettering set I ever saw was the "Leroy"; in fact, it often was simply spoken of as "using the Leroy" or even "Leroying" rather than "lettering" when not done freehand.  Leroy is actually Keuffel & Esser's brand name for these sets.  Mine has 9 of the narrow slats with letters & symbols in a variety of sizes and fonts; one is a very strange one that shows what I believe is sort of shorthand for laboratory glassware, and has a few oddities like a paramecium [I think that's what it is...].  The label inside the set has a note indicating that it belonged to the "Medical Illustration" department somewhere, so that makes sense.  I think I have another with military cartographer's symbols, somewhere...  Likely there were some even more esoteric than these; K & E made an immense variety of drafting-related equipment, back in the day.

[fflintstone]

I own a working electric eraser and I know where it is. I can actually say it is my second as one wore out on me. I started in the drafting business in 1978 while still in high school. In the beginning I had to alter a lot of old drawings. Some of the oldest were drawn on what was called linen and were dated 1957. I still have most of the old stuff. Unfortunately you can have a collage educated degreed Indian engineer do cad work in india for $5 an hour. This is why I am out of a job.
I worked on my last real non cad job in 1999 I have to say I don’t miss it. I prefer 3D design to 2D paper any day.