Good ol' Days-- Pounce Patterns

[Mike Jackson]

Old Forum Post by Mike Jackson on Nov. 8, 2001

Mike Jackson

There might have been a few things better in the Good Old Days of sign making, but I'll mention one that wasn't! We used to make a lot of pounce patterns, usually done from projected artwork using our overhead projector, or from charcoal rendered drawings. A large number of these were made with 48" kraft paper, sometimes with printed guide lines. When the job was finished, we would roll them up, put a name on the outside, and put them in a bin or shelf full of other previous jobs. After a while, finding the specific one you needed for a repeat project was more time consuming than making a new pattern. After a few years of neglect and build-up, we'd have to spend a full day going through them, throwing away the patterns that we probably would't need, and trying to organize the remaining "keepers".

Jump forward a few years, and we now keep all the patterns in digital form, so to speak. The beauty here is the are usually only about 40-60k on a 40 gig hard drive, usually alphabetically organized, and usually with a small file preview to quickly scan through a whole folder. We still make patterns, but they are discarded once a project is completed. The cost of making a new patterns from an old design is just factored into the new project. Additionally, the cost of a back-up 40 gig hard drive is much less than the cost of the square footage of the shop the patterns used to take up.

Rick Sacks:

When I start going through the patterns it can take days because it is a shortcut to Memory Lane.

There are patterns that I love that are for businesses that have been gone for years, but I don't want to toss them.

Just like you have Steven Parrish's kit, I have some classic patterns from some olde timers that I worked with. The precision of some of their gold patterns, done with a fine wheel, is amazing.

Someday, I'd like to do a room with them for wallpaper.

Billy Bob response to Rick Sacks:

Of course, just when the "useless" old patterns are trashed and gone, the (old) client calls and wants the original job redone!

Rick Sacks response to Billy Bob:

I have taken pounce patterns for some boats and trucks that are regular repeats and placed them section by section on my scanner and pieced them together to have the info on the computer to make new patterns that can easily be resized. It's a hassle, but on some occassions it has been well worth the effort.