pouncing help

[1leonchen]

i have two cutters which i use form flexi sign. how do i pounce on a us cutter mh 721 form flexi. and also how do i pounce on a gcc jugar. making some templates would love to pounce.

 

[Fred Weiss]

This really has nothing to do with FlexiSign ... only your ability to send a job to a plotter which could be any software. As far as I know, you can only make a pounce pattern on a plotter that actually has a rubber coated drum, such as the older Gerber plotters, instead of a plastic cutting strip, and a pounce tool that will fit where the blade holder fits for cutting or the pen tool for drawing. Otherwise, you can draw the job on plotter paper and then pounce it by hand with a pounce tool or an electric arc pounce tool.

Before plotters and printers became standard items for sign makers, pounce patterns were all drawn and then pounced. An opaque projector was often the highest tech equipment involved in the process.

 

[TimToad]

This really has nothing to do with FlexiSign ... only your ability to send a job to a plotter which could be any software. As far as I know, you can only make a pounce pattern on a plotter that actually has a rubber coated drum, such as the older Gerber plotters, instead of a plastic cutting strip, and a pounce tool that will fit where the blade holder fits for cutting or the pen tool for drawing. Otherwise, you can draw the job on plotter paper and then pounce it by hand with a pounce tool or an electric arc pounce tool.

Before plotters and printers became standard items for sign makers, pounce patterns were all drawn and then pounced. An opaque projector was often the highest tech equipment involved in the process.

And thank you Fred for making me feel really, really old. LOL

I just got back from quoting a hand lettered wall sign for a client and explained the whole process of pounce patterns.

Back in my billboard painting days, we used pounce patterns even on the Guinness World Book of Records holder for largest outdoor display at the time, the infamous J&B Scotch wall in Chicago, all 90'x200' of it. We'd have four 20' swing stages across and the your arms would just burn by the time you got to the end of the rolls. After the pouncing we'd have to go over every line with Sharpie's so that as we laid on colors, the lines would bleed through the paint. That wall was painted three times a year and it would take three or four pairs of us over 2 weeks to paint it each time.

I wonder how many of us know the history of the pounce pattern?

Michealangelo may have been one of the first prominent artists to use them while doing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As the story goes, he was under great pressure from the Vatican to finish so at the end of each day, he would adhere parchment up to the areas he wanted to start painting the next day and draw his designs out. His apprentices would take pins and perforate the lines and transfer the designs back onto the ceiling so they'd be ready in the morning. Then he would proceed painting.

 

[1leonchen]

[video=youtube;ndnC2P6tMr8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndnC2P6tMr8[/video]

maybe i cant explain it right. i want to do some thing like the video.

 

[OldPaint]

the machine doin it........is so slow......its is much easier when its big stuff to do it with one of these...

 

[signed off]

we still pounce patterns about 3 times a year. haven't electrocuted our selves yet but the system is getting on in years

 

[klmiller611]

And thank you Fred for making me feel really, really old. LOL

I just got back from quoting a hand lettered wall sign for a client and explained the whole process of pounce patterns.

Back in my billboard painting days, we used pounce patterns even on the Guinness World Book of Records holder for largest outdoor display at the time, the infamous J&B Scotch wall in Chicago, all 90'x200' of it. We'd have four 20' swing stages across and the your arms would just burn by the time you got to the end of the rolls. After the pouncing we'd have to go over every line with Sharpie's so that as we laid on colors, the lines would bleed through the paint. That wall was painted three times a year and it would take three or four pairs of us over 2 weeks to paint it each time.

I wonder how many of us know the history of the pounce pattern?

Michealangelo may have been one of the first prominent artists to use them while doing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. As the story goes, he was under great pressure from the Vatican to finish so at the end of each day, he would adhere parchment up to the areas he wanted to start painting the next day and draw his designs out. His apprentices would take pins and perforate the lines and transfer the designs back onto the ceiling so they'd be ready in the morning. Then he would proceed painting.

Thanks for this Tim. I never knew it, but also never really thought of how it came about.

I've never actually used them, but have several pounce patterns in my collection of passenger train logos from back in the 1940s. Interestingly enough, I also have a precut stencil pattern for one of the logos that came from the Demp-Knock Company. Anyone remember them?

Best
Ken Miller

 

[Marlene]

totally off topic as it is not help to the OP but I sure don't long for the good ole days of making pounce patterns, getting zapped and then having to paint

 

[Billct2]

...also of no help, but managing digital files is a piece of cake compared to a whole wall of boxes filled with pounce patterns.

 

[Marlene]

...also of no help, but managing digital files is a piece of cake compared to a whole wall of boxes filled with pounce patterns.

soooo much better. am I not one to look back fondly on those days of old

 

[signcrafters london]

soooo much better. am I not one to look back fondly on those days of old

I look back at them fondly in this regard -- from 1997-99 we got $6/sq. ft. to provide pounce patterns (pounced by hand with OldPaint's wheel) to the billboard guy who painted all the boards on the interstate in this area. We even bought a walkboard and prepared to start painting them ourselves.

Of course, after the very first one we did for Sonny's Barbecue, the painter bought himself one of the first grand format printers around here and that was that. Now I can buy 6 billboard banners for what I used to get for one pattern.