Warbird Information Exchange

The maintenance/restoration and sign shop guys at EAA are working on adding some interior details to Aluminum Overcast. They have some scans of some bomb windage charts and are trying to determine the exact font used to recreate some placards. Is anyone out there a font expert, or know of one with experience with this type of thing that I could contact?

Thanks for any info!

Zack

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Volunteer Coordinator/Curator - Military Aviation Museum - Virginia Beach, VA
"America's Flying Museum"
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Zack: Have them look carefully at the placards. There should be a part number somewhere on there. Wth that, they should be able dive into the microfilmed drawings for the B-17 and find the actual print for them. I know that the films for my Fairchild have all the placard drawings somewhere within them. You may run into the fonts being a custom design for that particular placard. The one Fairchild placard that I've run across so far, just gave the font information as dimensioned letters rather than a particular font..

If they fail to find part numbers or can't find the drawings, then the fastest thing would be to get someone that is well versed in AutoCad to create the font in Acad and use that to produce the screen for printing. It shouldn't take a decent cad operator more than an hour or two to create the font. I started to build a complete German font set for one of the companies that I used to jobshop at.

Take the scans to any good print shop & they should be able to tell you what it is. Then it's just a case of downloading the font from the web & making patterns for the placards.

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Zack: I just ran across this website that might be able to help....

http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

You upload a sample of the font and it will compare it to all the fonts in their database. Might be worth a shot.

Or just contact Boeing and ask them what font was on their computers in 1944.

Typography was vastly different even 40 years ago vs today. Finding a digital recreation of the particular typeface you are looking for could be tough. Unless you get really lucky, it is going to take some research.

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The Boeing drawings have part numbers for all the signs and placards (I think) - unless they are on Gov't Furnished (non-Boeing items). Almost all the ones we have run across in our Urbana restoration use the same font - it is available online - although we couldn't find a free version - it was inexpensive. The drawings call out the font, the size, color, and the format (lacquer decal, engraved, etc).

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Sur Le Nez

Contact this person at Boeing as he has helped me with missing blueprints for my PT-17 Stearman project.
Michael Lombardi
Corporate Historian,
The Boeing Company
michael.j.lombardi@boeing.com

This is what we do!

Probably half the time we get lucky and can find a matching font with a TTF file available. The rest of the time its down to doing what the previous poster said and drawing it out from scratch in CAD.

Drop me a PM if you need any further help.

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Warbird Colour - Authentic historic aircraft finishes http://www.warbirdcolour.co.uk

Seems like our very own t6flier has been down this road before with North American products. Maybe a PM is in order?

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

All this info looks good to me! I've spent countless hours at various font websites till my eyes started bleeding trying to find correct fonts. I've not tried the site that
you can upload your particular request and have it scanned for potential match's. I like that idea! The prints that I've dealt with typically show the wording of the particular panel but no reference to a "font" other that some obscure "specification" which is elusive to me.
Interestingly however some of the font used for wording in the prints changes from print to print and almost never is the same as the
actual produced part. I say almost because I have seen a few dwgs that seem to have the correct font but no ref to what it is.
I think some mistakenly look at a print, see the font the draftsman used to draw the print and assume that is it. When in actuality if your fortunate to
have the original part it's nothing like what the draftsman used. Most of my reference here is for NAA products. We are still struggling a bit for military stencil font. There are a lot of them available on the web but they are all a bit off from being correct 100%. I am thinking about cutting the alphabet from a stencil cutting machine and having each letter digitized.

Good luck!
Mike V

You will notice (as you have said) that the prints aren't drawn using the font that is called out. In other words you can't look at the drawing and match the font from the drawing image. What we did was search on the internet for the name of the font the drawing calls for to find a modern day equivalent.

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Sur Le Nez

I believe you guys are trying to hard and over analyzing the font issue. There were not very many fonts used back in WWII. The manufactures didn't (obviously) use computers and didn't use spray masks as we know them today. Like paint colors, there wasnt a real "tight" standard. Remember they were trying to win a war, not over analyze the little stuff. A good old fashion stencil stamping machine was used. If you go to the Monogram books they layout the "fonts" or as it was called back then, the lettering alphabet.
If your looking for a computerized font for replicating the manual stencil machines(with the lines thru the letters) yes there is one(not a MS or Adobe font, home made). I have been using it since I bought my cutter/plotter/spray mask machine back in 2000. As a former software company owner and programmer for 33 years I can tell you it's not real hard to make your own. I have done it.
Mike V I'm curious why you didn't ask me about this several years ago when I told you about the spray mask cutter you bought. Could have saved you countless hours online.
Good luck !

Chuck

Chances are the draftsmen that aid out the originals and original patterns either lettered by hand, or used any of the commercially available lettering templates to keep things neat.
A quick search on eBay comes up with a number of lettering guides of the proper vintage to have been used http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-WRICO-Lettering-Guide-6-Templates-IOB-/260707467763?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb36041f3 , http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-WRICO-ENGINEERING-LETTERING-PEN-GUIDES-BOX-/140490234065?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20b5ded8d1,http://cgi.ebay.com/Wrico-Instrument-co-lettering-guide-LW-Gougler-/370467074732?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item56418ef2ac,http://cgi.ebay.com/Early-Spaulding-Moss-Lettering-Guides-/250743572498?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a617b4812

Ditto Stencils other than machine made http://cgi.ebay.com/STENSO-LETTERING-GUIDE-44-1-INCH-1943-BALTIMORE-MD-/260708796809?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cb3748989

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

Chuck, the original poster was asking about internal placards. These were done in a variety of ways by different manufacturers and were often made by outside contractors. Of course these items were printed rather than stencilled. I agree with you that the press-cut type external stencils were generally similar in apearance. But it all depends on how deeply you want to go in to it. Our Spitfire stencils have several different 'fonts' or letter types which replicate the those used in period, in some cases certain fonts are unique to an individual factory. I have seen original stencils on surviving wrecks which have three different types of factory 'font' for stencils on the same aircraft!

Going back to the OP's placards, these were often sophisticated and beautifully produced items, often with very distinct fonts. Look at the NAA internal decals for the P-51 (or 'decalomanias' as they called them) - each one had its own carefully constructed setting-out drawing with letter spacings, sizing etc all dimensioned. It did not matter how large or small the marking was, they took a lot of care over each one regardless of the fact that 'there was war on'. Printing technology was pretty advanced back then - although obviously 'manual', without the use of computers and quite sophisticated fonts were available and were used, surprisingly so perhaps, but the evidence is there. We do use computers today, but only to make it easier to replicate what was done in period. We can make decals in our home offices now that would have required the use of a large printing workshop in WWII, but with care and effort the end product will be very close to the originals. Similarly, the use of laser cutting, be it for aircraft components or stencil sheets - its just a means to get to the same end easier and faster.

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I agree with Mark V: Many of the manufacturers were very specific on the placards as far as layout, character sizing and especially font.


They had tons of fonts back then and many different fonts were used by the same manufacturer for different placards, stamps and screen printing. There are a few fonts that seem to have been commonly used by many different aircraft manufacturers in WWII. I have seen this one font used so regularly that I wonder if it may have been specified by the Army/Navy or was it simply widely recognized as the font to use by the industry? The WWII Hamilton Standard prop water transfer decal had several different fonts and even more were used in some of the contractors decals too. Not very many Ham Standard stickers made these days come close at all.

Chuck you think that folks are spending too much time on these kinds of details but it is precisely these kinds of details that makes a difference in a judging event. Sometimes the competition isn't all that great and these details don't factor in as much and other times it gets down to splitting hairs and font type. You of all people should know about this as you have been in the thick of it yourself on different occasions.

Personally I love it when there are several different aircraft with this level of detail competing for an award. Mike V is one of those kinds of guys who is passionate about this and is constantly striving to turn out a more authentic product/restoration. It is a real joy to see what he will come up with next. Mike is certainly not alone as there are more and more individuals and shops who are turning out masterful restorations. To stay competitive they have to keep turning out a more authentic restoration. It is this very competition that really pushes folks to do the research and this research can produce a more historically accurate aircraft which, to me is what the Warbird movement is all about.

Instead of a custom creation or someones interpretation of what was done back in WWII the research produces the information and documentation to show how things were actually done. Call it rivet counting or what have you but when the aircraft and its history are put above the desires of the individual then it truly is a tribute to the men and women who designed, built, flew and maintained these great aircraft.

Finding the correct font is simply one of the hundreds or thousands of details that goes into a true restoration. My hat is off to all of you folks that go the extra mile to make it more accurate and authentic.

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