While I was traveling, I found in an art store a pack of 8X10 photo-sensitive cyanotype “blueprint” sheets. They are being sold as something you can put flowers, knick-knacks and photos on, leave in the sun, wash off with water and then you have a permanent “sun print.” “Meh” on the fru-fru artsy aspects, but it seems that this would be a way to make *actual* blueprints. So I looked online for larger sheets, and found (IIRC) up to 20X30 sheets… for ridiculously expensive. Feh.
But I also found quite a number of youtube videos of artsy types making their own blueprint paper by adding various chemicals to various types of paper. The chemicals can be had fairly straightforwardly, as can the paper; the only challenge at that point is proper preparation… and that I can handle.
It occurs to me that I have quite a large number of large format drawings that could be converted into *real* cyanotype blueprints… white lines on a blue background. The process would be to clean up the drawings as far as possible, and make sure that they are clean black lines on a white background… much like the original hand-drafted ink-on-vellum drawings. These digital files would then be printed out full size on something mostly transparent, or at least translucent, maybe mylar. This print would then be laid over the blueprint paper, covered with a sheet of plexi to make sure it’s all flat and immovable, placed in the Utah sun for a specified time, brought in, washed off, dried off, and then done. It would be labor intensive and would require quite a bit of setup… but once finished, it would be a REAL BLUEPRINT.
The B-29 diagram I sell would be good for this. I have a high-rez Dyna Soar blueprint (so far unreleased in any form) that would be perfect for this. Heck, the Space Station V 2D CAD drawings might be turned into a damned convincing set of blueprints.
Previous efforts to sell printed blueprints – admittedly digital prints, using ink – were miserable failures. Cyanotype blueprints might be more interesting… or less. But they’d be much more difficult and expensive to get set up, and consequently probably more expensive to sell. I can buy the 8X10 sheets for something along the lines of a buck a piece; I’m thinking of using the pack I have for basic experiments… and using both old General Atomic Project Orion diagrams and my own Orion CAD diagrams as the test articles.
Is this concept of interest to anyone? Apart from the fact that the blueprints are new, and the paper may well be noticably different, these might very well easily pass as actual blueprints, made Back In The Day. Fold ’em up and leave ’em in the sun, and they’d fade in an entirely “proper” way.
Let me know.