Ink and Cat Concert – A Quirky Journey Through Technical Drawing Tools and Traditions

The other day I happened to overhear some students waiting to hand in their drawings. The conversation was all about who had made theirs, how they’d done it, and how much hassle it had been. Naturally, the rules say the drawings have to be done in ink, by hand, not on a computer—which, in the early 21st century, is, to put it mildly, an anachronism. Meanwhile, everyone laments that the standard of education is falling.

I don’t dispute that an engineer should know how to draw. But first and foremost, they should be learning freehand sketching—because even in the computer age, that’s still essential. Out on a building site, when you need to explain something to the bricklayers, or quickly rough out an idea, that skill is invaluable. Proper use of drawing tools is barely taught anymore; people don’t learn how to use two rulers to draw a parallel or perpendicular line, no one mentions how to sharpen a compass point or how to hold a pencil. The finished drawings—with a few honorable exceptions—are pitiful.

If you look at what they teach under Engineering Drawing and Sketching at MIT, you’ll find it’s broadly the same as at the Budapest University of Technology. They too draw isometric cubes and hand-sketch the intersections of pyramids and prisms. The real difference lies in emphasis—and that’s what’s hard to grasp in our system. We keep tending the sacred tradition, all the while ignoring the fact that the ship is sinking. And the band plays on—producing a fine old cacophony…

One student remarked how odd it was that back in vocational school, their teacher used to call that thing—he pointed to a Standardgraph set lying on the table—a “csőtoll” (technical pen), whereas the lecturer here always says “tus” (ink). “So is it tus or csőtoll?” he asked. He got nothing in reply but uncertain looks. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard a conversation like that. At first I thought I must have misunderstood, but slowly I had to accept the truth: in the 21st century, some students don’t know what the word “tus” means—or “csőtoll” either. Incredible, that there are people who don’t know the names of the very tools they work with! Or at least, they’re not sure.

Well then, my brothers in the Lord—time for a quick review!

A Brief History of Drawing Tools

There was a time when technical drawings were made by hand. The plans of the famous Hungarian master builders, such as Miklós Ybl, Imre Steindl, Alajos Hauszmann, Ödön Lechner, and their contemporaries were all hand-drawn. If you’d like to admire such works, take a look at the Miklós Ybl Virtual Archive: http://ybl.bparchiv.hu. Or perhaps check out the 20,000-forint banknote! It features one of Ybl’s creations: the temporary Hungarian House of Representatives on Bródy Sándor Street (now the Italian Cultural Institute). The image was made after a contemporary copper engraving.

Note: The House of Representatives was built in record time—even by modern standards—just ninety days, without machinery, entirely by hand. To speed up the work, Ybl contracted Viennese craftsmen for the carpentry. This so enraged the carpenters’ apprentices of Pest that they staged a “cat concert” (a noisy protest) under the window of Ybl’s home on Üllői Road.

At that time, if someone wanted to succeed in a design competition, it wasn’t enough to be distantly related to Brother Lawrence Butcher (Lőrinc Mészáros)—one also had to present the jury with well-executed, beautiful plans. Of course, the masters mentioned above rarely did all the drafting themselves; they had staff in their offices for the more tedious work. Nevertheless, many truly fine works were produced in this period. The plans were first sketched in pencil on paper, the lines were then inked in tus (drawing ink), and they were usually colored with watercolor.

In the 19th century, colored architectural drawings were generally accepted—indeed, expected. Then, at the end of the century, reprographic processes appeared. Of these, the most widespread was blueprinting (diazotype printing). It remained in use for reproducing technical drawings right up to the end of the 20th century. By now, it has been completely replaced by xerography—which, incidentally, is what people today mistakenly call “photocopying.”

Note: The principle of xerography was developed by Hungarian physicist Pál Selényi at Tungsram, and inspired by his article, Chester Carlson in the United States developed and patented the process in 1942. The principle is as follows: a drum coated with a photosensitive semiconductor layer is electrostatically charged, and the image is then exposed onto the drum. Exposure can be done by direct optical projection (analog Xerox copying) or by drawing a digital image onto it with a laser beam (laser printer). Toner powder is then applied to the drum’s surface, where it adheres to the charged areas. The toner is transferred to paper, which is then passed between heated pressure rollers to fix the image. The process is entirely dry.

Blueprinting (diazotype printing), the traditional method of “photocopying,” is based on the light sensitivity of diazo compounds. The paper is coated with an aqueous solution of some aromatic diazonium salt and a colorless azo dye, and then dried. In this state, it is sold as “copying paper.” In a blueprint machine, the original document and the copy paper are placed directly on top of each other and exposed to UV light (contact printing), then developed in ammonia vapor. The chemical reaction causes the unexposed lines to appear in dark color. Naturally, during copying, some of the ammonia vapor escaped from the machine, filling the room with the unpleasant (and toxic!) smell of ammonia—a smell that lingered for a while on the copies themselves. Moreover, the result was not permanent: after a while (especially under light), the rest of the drawing also began to discolor. Still, it was perfectly suitable for quickly and cheaply producing site copies of hand-drawn, carefully guarded plans on tracing paper.

 

Diazotype printing was suitable for copying high-contrast black-and-white line drawings from a transparent or translucent original. The lines—depending on the dye used—usually appeared in indigo blue, though sepia was also popular. Blueprinting could reproduce tonal shades only to a limited extent and could not reproduce colors at all, only dark lines. As a result, engineers quickly abandoned the use of colored drawings, replacing colors with hatching (parallel line shading).

Drawings made in black ink (tus) on translucent tracing paper were ideal for reproduction by this method, so it’s no surprise that tracing paper and diazotype printing remained in use for large-format technical drawings until the end of the 20th century. For smaller drawings, xerography took over. With the spread of large-format (A0) scanners and inkjet plotters, ammonia-based copying disappeared entirely from practice. The new methods produce cleaner, crisper copies without toxic chemicals.

In public perception, the meaning of “photocopy” and “photocopy paper” changed, and even the memory of those bluish or brownish blueprint copies is fading away. Yet their influence still lingers in technical culture: there’s a widespread belief that an engineering drawing is a black-and-white line drawing where material properties are indicated with hatching—but few people know why hatching became standard in the first place.

Fortunately, modern reproduction techniques can handle colors, so the hatching that was once a necessary workaround is now beginning to give way again to colored drawings.

Ink (Tus)

I’ve already spoken about the “cat concert,” but not yet about tus. Tus (spelled with a single s*) here does not mean the loud, short burst of celebratory music played by an orchestra after a toast. Tus is ink—the liquid you fill a technical pen (csőtoll) with.

Note: In Hungarian, a “tuss” refers to a short, solemn musical ending or a short, loud orchestral piece that sounds like cheering. It is often performed in honor of a person or event.

The original form of ink was developed in China around 5,000 years ago, made from pine soot, lamp oil, musk, and gelatin from animal hides. In the early Middle Ages, the Arabs modified the recipe: they mixed lampblack with gum arabic and honey, kneaded it into a dough-like mass, pressed it into sticks, and dried it. Before use, it was dissolved in water. Solid ink sticks could still be bought in Vienna as late as the 1970s.

Shrewd engineers would order it in bulk from there and sell it for a good price back home. Why the demand? Because girls would draw a line down their stockings with it. For what purpose? At that time, nylon stockings were the status symbol—not silk. The trouble was, in the Socialist People’s Republic back home, nylon stockings were hardly available at all. The nylon stockings of the time had, for manufacturing reasons, a dark seam running down them. This look was imitated by painting a line of tus down one’s stockings.

In the Middle Ages, new recipes were developed: ink was made from the twigs of hawthorn or rose bushes, or from oak galls mixed with soot, and was still usually thickened with gum arabic and various oils. Modern inks contain much less dissolved material. The pigment is typically a tar-based dye, which the chemical industry can now produce in virtually any shade—not only black (or dark purple, dark brown), but also yellow, blue, green, white, and so on.

In addition to the pigment, today’s inks are emulsions in distilled water containing surfactants, lubricants, preservatives, and consistency modifiers—such as borax, shellac, wax or synthetic polymer suspensions, formalin, glycerin, or alcohol.

Ink (tus) is, therefore, a liquid you don’t want to touch with your bare hands—it’ll leave you stained. In the past—apart from the solid form—it was sold in glass bottles of 25 ml and 1000 ml; today, plastic bottles of 23 ml and 250 ml are the standard packaging. What old and modern tus have in common is that, compared to other inks (e.g., fountain pen ink), they are thicker and dry more slowly.

Tracing Paper (Pausz)

Pausz—more properly pauszpapír—is a translucent type of paper. It is acid-free, with a smooth surface. It is usually white, but colored versions (yellow, red, green, etc.) are also made. It is available in rolls or pre-cut to size (standard A-series formats).

When a pencil-drafted drawing on technical drawing paper is to be inked, the process goes as follows: the drawing is placed on the drawing board and fixed under tension. A sheet of tracing paper of the same size is then placed over it and secured tightly with adhesive tape so it cannot shift. Through the translucent tracing paper, the pencil drawing is visible and can be inked over with technical pens (csőtoll) of the required line thickness. It is best not to remove the tracing paper during the work, as it is hard to reposition it exactly. Another issue is that in humid weather, tracing paper tends to sag, so it’s wise to work quickly.

Tracing paper is difficult to glue neatly. Liquid adhesives usually cause it to warp and look unsightly. The best currently available material is Vellum double-sided adhesive roller tape, which is completely invisible. For large surfaces, Tesa Permanent Spray Glue has proven effective. In my experience, cellophane tape (clear adhesive tape) does not make for a neat join, but the matte, vellum-like 3M Scotch Magic Tape works quite well.

Note: Tracing paper (pauszpapír) is made from cellulose fiber, though rags were also used in the past. The key is to start with high-quality, carefully selected fiber material. The fibers are chopped, pulped with water, and then treated with sulfuric acid. The sulfite pulp is washed with water and then refined again—fibrillated—which breaks down the cellulose walls of the fibers and helps them bond together. The pulp is then bleached with chlorine.

In the production of ordinary paper, fillers (such as chalk powder) are added at this stage to increase opacity. In tracing paper production, this is not the goal—on the contrary, greater transparency is desired. This can be achieved simply by continuing the fibrillation until a jelly-like, translucent pulp is obtained. This method produces high transparency and uniform quality over a wide thickness range (from 42 to 280 g/m²). However, it is expensive, as the pulp must be cooked for a long time and losses are relatively high.

Another method—mainly used in the United States—is to add a filler to ordinary paper pulp whose optical refractive index matches that of cellulose, making the material transparent. This paper became known as vellum.

A third possibility is to briefly immerse the finished paper sheet in sulfuric acid, which converts part of the cellulose into a gelatinous, light-transmitting amyloid form. The paper is then carefully washed and dried. Paper produced this way is highly resistant to fats and oils, and moderately resistant to water, which is why it is also used as a packaging material (see “greaseproof paper”).

Tracing paper can be either coated or uncoated. For laser printing, only the uncoated type is suitable, but with an inkjet printer, both types can be printed on nicely. In the 1990s, tracing paper began to be replaced by plastic film—usually matte-finished polyester film. This material is even more dimensionally stable than tracing paper and does not change size when exposed to moisture. It is also heat-resistant and can be printed on.

Brush

You have to use something to apply tus to paper. The Chinese have traditionally used a brush for this. Even today, Chinese children are taught to write with a brush—an entirely sensible approach, since a child’s fine motor skills are even less developed than those of a teenager. It is much easier to draw large, beautiful characters with a brush than to cram tiny swallowtails and bowl-shaped strokes into the narrow lines of a ruled notebook with a ballpoint pen—but listen to me talking nonsense, as if teaching writing with a brush were a thing nowadays!

But I suppose I don’t need to introduce what a brush is:

Ruling Pen

A brush or dip pen has to be dipped repeatedly during use, but a ruling pen, redis pen, or graphos can hold a few drops of tus in the tool itself. The ruling pen is familiar to many, as it was still included until quite recently in various compass sets—although many people don’t actually know what it is, merely accepting that along with their compass they’ve been given this bird’s-beak-shaped, screw-adjusted thing.

Now, the classic screw-adjustable ruling pen must be sharpened before use. The screw is used to set the line width, and then a single drop of ink is placed between its jaws—not by dipping, but by letting it fall from above—so that there is about 6–8 mm of ink between them. Then you could draw your line. Of course, if that drop of ink spilled out onto the paper, you had a problem.

While writing brushes should be stored damp, a ruling pen must be thoroughly washed after use and put away dry.

Dip Pen

The dip pen is the metal counterpart of the traditional goose quill. It consists of a small curved metal plate split at the end (the ink channel) with a rounded pen tip. To use it, the nib must be placed into a penholder. It must be dipped in ink repeatedly; the ink settles under the plate and flows from there through the channel onto the paper. The pen draws a line whose thickness corresponds to the diameter of the nib tip.

A version designed for thinner ink, equipped with its own ink reservoir and ink feed, is the modern fountain pen, which is still in use today.

Redis Pen

A standard dip pen isn’t well suited for drawing thicker lines—it’s more for writing—so a variant was developed that could produce a broader ink trace: the redis pen. It differs from the ordinary nib in that its end has a small round “foot,” whose size determines the line width. Typical sizes were 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0 mm, though I’ve even come across a 5 mm one.

Since thicker lines require more ink, the redis pen was fitted with a small spring-steel plate that acted as an ink drop holder. Like other dip pens, it still had to be dipped in ink during use. While a regular pen can be held at almost any angle to the paper, the redis pen had to be held at a strict 60° angle because of its round foot.

Graphos

The graphos system came with a wide variety of nibs: for line widths of 0.12, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.8, 1.0, and 2.0 mm. They also had letter codes: the “A” nib was for drawing alongside a ruler, the “O” for lettering, the “T” for freehand lines, and the “R” was already a primitive version of the technical pen (csőtoll).

Compared to the ruling pen, the graphos was true luxury—it was essentially a fountain pen. Ink was filled into the reservoir in the barrel, and the nib was simply snapped onto the connector at the front of the pen.

Technical Pen (Csőtoll)

The refillable csőtoll (technical pen) nib could be fitted into the same penholder used for dip pen nibs. It had a small metal or plastic reservoir attached to it that could hold one or two drops of ink. The tube-shaped tip produced a line exactly as wide as its own diameter—meaning a different pen was needed for each line thickness. Ink flow was, again, ensured by capillary action.

Inside the tube was a needle that fit closely into it, leaving a narrow gap around it through which the ink could flow onto the paper. The reservoir was open at the top, so the pen could only be held or placed in an upright position—otherwise the ink would spill out. During use, the tip had to be held perfectly perpendicular to the paper. This was made more comfortable by the fact that the tube was attached at an angle to the penholder, so the part you gripped was slanted while the tube itself remained vertical.

The “Rotring”

In the 1950s, Rotring ruling pens—also known as technical pens—appeared on the market. The product was patented by the German company rOtring. The company was founded in 1928 under the name Tintenkuli Handels GmbH, and its first product was a type of technical pen called the Tintenkuli. This already showed features that would later become characteristic of Rotring technical pens: a dispensing needle mounted in a lightweight housing, a screw-out nib, and a pressure-equalizing channel on the outer surface.

Interestingly, the Tintenkuli never became widespread in Europe, though it was common in the USA. Its inventors intended it as a stylographic pen, but it ended up being used as a technical drawing pen. Later models had a red ring placed on the barrel by the manufacturer, which over time became its trademark. In the early 1970s, to emphasize the brand identity, the company adopted the name Rotring, stylized as rOtring.

The pen’s improved versions were produced under the brand names Micronorm, Isograph, and Rapidograph by the company and, through its American subsidiary, by Koh-i-Noor. In the West, its use became widespread in the 1950s, and before long the Rapidograph became the star technical drawing instrument of its era. In our country, it was prohibitively expensive and only began to be used by draftsmen in the 1970s.

The Isograph is still available today, and other companies also offer cheaper technical pens (e.g., Faber-Castell, Staedtler, Aristo, Standardgraph). In 1998, Rotring was acquired by the American company Sanford L.P., but the brand name was retained, and they still produce the Rapidograph, now marketed mainly to artists. With the spread of CAD systems, the product’s technical drawing applications have practically disappeared.

The standard sizes, according to ISO 128, are: 0.1 – 0.13 – 0.18 – 0.2 – 0.25 – 0.3 – 0.35 – 0.4 – 0.5 – 0.6 – 0.7 – 0.8 – 1.0 – 1.4 – 2.0 mm. You don’t need a whole stack of them, though—for most work, the 0.25 – 0.35 – 0.5 – 0.7 mm range is sufficient. Ink (tus) is filled into the ink reservoir located in the pen head. It flows down to the nib through an ink channel. As with other technical pens, it must be held perpendicular to the paper during drawing. If that’s tiring, use the hinged adapter in the box, which allows the pen barrel to be attached at an angle to the head. (Usually, two adapters are included—this angled hinged one, and another for compasses, since a technical pen can also be mounted in a compass.)

If left unused for a few days, technical pens can dry out! After use, they must be disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. Always follow the instructions when disassembling! Never completely take the head apart or pull out the feed needle from its position—below about 0.5 mm, you won’t be able to put it back in, it will bend, and then the whole pen is ruined. If the pen dries out, it can be completely destroyed. Soaking for several days in a mixture of water and a little isopropyl alcohol can help, as can an ultrasonic cleaner, but if it’s badly dried, you might as well throw it away. Cleaning fluid is available for these pens, but it’s quite expensive and, in my opinion, not significantly better than water.

To prevent drying, in the 1960s Rotring developed the Rapidomat technical pen humidifier. This is a device with a water reservoir into which you insert the pens into special slots. The tips sit in an environment of 100% saturated water vapor, so they don’t dry out (provided you occasionally check the water level and refill it). Later, the four-pen Rapidomat was followed by an eight-slot version, as well as the Hidromat, which also held eight pens, released in the late 1970s. Such devices are really only useful for those who work with these pens continuously.

Fineliners

In recent years, fiber-tip pens specifically designed for drawing, sketching, and graphic work—known as fineliners (e.g., Rotring Tikky Graphic)—have appeared on the market. They are relatively inexpensive, popular, and disposable. There have been attempts at refillable versions, but since the tips wear out fairly quickly, refilling them makes little sense.

The cheaper types, like ordinary felt-tip pens, contain dye-based ink. Premium models, however, use pigment ink. Pigments do not dissolve; instead, they are present in the ink as a suspension of solid particles (as opposed to dyes, which dissolve completely). This allows them to cover the paper more effectively, produce denser lines, resist fading from light, and remain waterproof.

Even so, lines drawn with fineliners are not as opaque and appear slightly grayer than those made with a technical pen (csőtoll) and tus. On the other hand, fineliners are more comfortable to use: they don’t have to be held perfectly perpendicular to the paper, they don’t drip (a mishap that can happen even with a Rotring), and they dry faster than tus. Ink from tus takes 5–10 minutes—or at least a minute or two—to dry enough not to smear with a careless move, such as sliding a ruler over it. This slows down the work, whereas the faster drying time of fineliners allows for quicker progress.

Some Technical Tips

Scraping: Tus can be removed from tracing paper (pausz) with a sharp blade by scraping. Don’t scrape with the corner or tip of the blade—use the straight edge. This will also remove some of the tracing paper’s surface, thinning it. Pigment ink from fineliners can be removed the same way as tus—and in my experience, even more easily. Dye-based fineliners (“booze markers”) can’t be scraped off, as their thin, highly wetting ink soaks into the tracing paper itself. (For this reason, the truly sadistic instructor marks mistakes on a drawing with a thick permanent alcohol marker—guaranteeing you’ll have to redo the whole thing…)

Grease stains: Tus won’t adhere well to greasy areas on tracing paper—it won’t wet the surface properly. This makes line work harder and sometimes the pen won’t write at all. So—don’t handle the tracing paper with your bare fingers!

Lint and dust: Fluffy paper (such as ordinary drawing paper) can contaminate a technical pen nib, so avoid using it if possible! Never draw on dirty or smudged surfaces. If dirt gets on the pen tip, wipe it off immediately with a small cloth. Don’t ink directly over pencil lines (the graphite dust will also get into the pen); instead, do the drawing on ordinary paper, then place tracing paper over it and ink the lines there. Even with regular use, technical pens should be washed occasionally to remove sediment buildup.

Filling: Don’t completely fill the ink reservoir of a technical pen! Only fill as much as you’ll need for the current job. Keep in mind that the pressure equalizing channel only works under normal operating conditions—if you’re carrying your pens around in the cold and then enter a warm room, you must wait for them to warm up. Otherwise, the expanding air can push ink out through the pressure equalizer and leave a blot on your drawing.

Drying out: I’ve already mentioned important points about this above. If you screw the cap on tightly and the cap’s seal is intact, the ink in the pen tip won’t dry quickly (in a 0.2 mm pen, it can happen within a few hours without a cap). With the cap on, a pen filled with ink can be stored for several days without trouble.

How to Do a Drawing Homework Assignment

In descriptive geometry, you should not do the constructions exactly the way they’re taught! If you do, you won’t really learn the subject, but you will suffer, waste a ton of time, and end up frustrated because the result will be poor.

For example, when doing multiple projection transformations of a 3D nesciquidpolyhedron, you may discover by the third or fourth step that you’ve run out of space on your drawing sheet. At that point, you have to start over. With straightedge constructions, errors accumulate, so even if you work very precisely, the final result will still be ugly and distorted.

In short, there will be lots of problems, and you’ll spend time fussing over things you won’t learn anything from—like erasing. The solution? Do the construction in AutoCAD!

Advantages of this method:

1. You’ll learn to use it, if you don’t already know how.
2. It’s deadly accurate—errors don’t accumulate, and the result is perfect.
3. If you mess up, it’s easy to correct.
4. You’ll never run out of space: the drawing area is practically infinite, and at the end you can fit the finished drawing to the sheet.
5. You can try multiple variations—you can do it in 2D as if you were working on paper, and also in 3D.

While others are erasing, you’ll actually be learning descriptive geometry!

If your teacher insists on a hand-made construction, here’s the trick: print the drawing to scale (don’t forget to calibrate the printer first). The old-school method was to prick the points through onto a blank sheet with a needle—but those marks will show. Instead, create a “marker points” layer in AutoCAD where you mark all the key points. Then print a second sheet showing only these points, each as a tiny dot.

Now take your ruler and pencil! Using the first, full drawing as a reference, neatly draw in the lines. Don’t forget to add the thin, faint construction lines as well!

If you use a laser printer, it’s hard to get caught, because even erasing won’t give it away—the eraser will also remove the tiny printed dots. (With an inkjet printer, the ink soaks into the paper and remains even if you erase the pencil line drawn over it.)

Once the pencil drawing is complete, you can ink it. Just as we used to do: always construct (draw) in pencil first, then ink with a technical pen (csőtoll) or fineliner! Be very careful—mistakes in ink are painful to correct, and in the case of a fineliner, not at all.

If you do it right, you’ll finish in half the time, the result will be perfect, and you’ll learn the construction properly—because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to produce something that looks as if you’d done it by hand.

So this isn’t cheating—it’s an “alternative learning pathway” instead of pointless erasing…