gauge pins

I have double grip gauge pins for my c&p pilot. does anyone know of a good “how to” on using these on the web somewhere? I’ve never used these before and am looking for a tutorial. Thanks!

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You simply make a slit in the tympan paper perpendicular to the intended edge of the sheet placement position. Loosen the nuts on the top a bit and slide the blade into the slit. after aligning the top edge of the gage pin with the sheet position, tighten the nuts again. Holds like magic. Adjust the tongue to exent over the edge of the paper, but not so as to hit any of the type in the form.

All very new to me as well and I tried last night to place pins. I get the way they work, but on my Kelsey 5 x 8 it seems like there is very little clearance or room to place them low down. It dawned on me to lock up the form higher in the chase to give me more room to move. But, some tips please on how to determine where the pins belong. Is it all using a rule? Printing on the tympan and then washing off the image? Any help is greatly appreciated. Best - Neil

Erika- I like the double grip gauge pins because they only require the one slit and are easy to loosen and adjust, however I find they are a bit bulky for my pilot. Where there’s not a lot of room and you need to keep the guides out of the way, every bit of space matters.

The most common, McGill Spring Tongue Gauge pins I also find a hassle as they dont like to stay in place and can easily be knocked out of position unless you tape/glue them down.

The Kort Adjustable Quad guides are the best. Putting them in the tympan easily takes a bit of practice, but they’re smaller than the double grip guides and they lock down well.

Bigboy…if you don’t want to print on your tympan, you can temporarily tape some acetate or sheer tissue paper to the tympan, print on that, then slip the paper you’re printing on underneath till it’s in the correct position, then mark the bottom and sides of the paper with pencil as a guide to where to place your guides.

There is not one only single right gage pin or way to set them.
The old way was to print on the tympan sheet and measure and draw the lines for bottom and side edge of the paper. The bottom pins go at roughly the 1/4 and 3/4 points of the bottom dimension. The side pin goes at 1/3.
As an alternate to printing on the tympan sheet, I tape a sheet of plain bond copy paper at two corners and print on it. I then measure and draw the sheet edge lines extending them to appear on the tympan sheet. I remove and discard the bond sheet, complete the lines on the tympan sheet and set the pins as above.
The McGill pins are made with two points to stick into the tympan sheet. When new, these points are too blunt. I sharpen them with a file to a chisel edge. When I have made my final asjustment, I tap the sharpened pin points just through the tympan sheet. If you do not slam the stock into the pins, they stay in place.

With the magill guage pins, we used to drop spot of sealing wax on the pins after setting the teeth into the tympan. When finished scrape the wax off with an ink knife.