Buying & Collecting Slide Rules

LOOKING FOR A SLIDE RULE

If you are looking for a slide rule on ebay you are either a collector or an enthusiast, (you like using them). While a collector will look for certain kinds of slide rules, a user, or a "math wonk," or a student will be looking for totally different kinds of slide rules.

Rule of thumb for Collectors: rare, weird, and old is good. A common slide rule is what you buy to fill in the holes in your collection.

Rule of thumb for Users and Students: late model, student style, plastic or aluminum bodies are the best. Beware high end scientific slide rules; they are very cool, but can be too cluttered and harder to use, and too valuable to abuse with normal use.

Specific things to look for:

Firstly, is there a 'cursor,' (the sliding lens with a hair line)? If it's missing, don't bother; if it's broken, it can get too expensive to repair.

Secondly, if you can see 'irregular' gaps between the slide and the frame, it's usually not fixable; if you "can't" see the separations between the slide and frame, that's great! But if you see a very straight and sharp gap, that's okay as long as it isn't huge, (on 'high end' and 'aluminum' slide rules it's adjustable!).

Thirdly, is the face of the rule clean, discolored, legible, badly scratched, or engraved badly by some previous owner? (professional engraving or calligraphy can be kind of cool). Watch out for corrosion on screws, cursor frames and metal end brackets. Green corrosion is not good, but can be cleaned. This can mean that the nice bright metal plating will give way to copper or plain steel finish that rust very easily and doesn't look so great. Brown or red corrosion is very bad and very hard to get a good results with.
Also, watch for bleed-thru from leather carrying cases, usually it can be cleaned, but you really don't want to mess with that job.

Fourthly, Warping! When looking at the photos in the ads, always look for angles that show how straight the rule is. Warped rules are junk! (Beware that some cameras, at some angles, make every slide rule look bent, so don't freak out until you verify what you're looking at).

Fifthly, engraved is good, printed...not so much. But WAIT! Pickett aluminum slide rules are one of the finer slide rules out there and are printed...kinda...it's a really high tech photo transfer and works great! Early Picketts were made of magnesium, (horrible material! corrodes badly!). Entry level Picketts are plastic and engraved and not bad; good for beginners and very durable.
That said, entry level and cheapy slide rules tend to be printed or worse - printed on paper that is glued to wood. Printed slides are okay, but easy to ruin by cleaning.

Student slide rules can run the gamut from real crap to high art, but all tend to be more robust than their Professional cousins, i.e. plastic or heavy wood.

A note on engraving: fat lines are bad! The finer the lines, the more precise the slide rule is. If the lines look rough or blurry, it can be harder to get a good reading and also reflects poor quality control and workmanship. When you see a scale, (the series of marks on the face of a slide rule) that has very fine and precise lines, you'll know you are looking at high quality.

Now that we've covered the basics, lets talk about scales....
I won't bore you with all the specifics, but here's some stuff to take note of.
There are math scales, (the vast majority) and there are specialty scales. Specialty scales can be anything from metric conversions to valve sizing. Some slide rules have hyper specialized scales for light absorption and wavelength properties or chemical weights and pressure values, and some are financial with currency conversions and profit formulas. Some are just weird and some are highly useful even today and are highly sought after, i.e. valuable.
On the straight math side, there are 4 or 5 basic scales that just about all slide rules share- C, D, A, B, K. In the beginning, these were considered just fine, (Albert Einstein, Wernher von Braun, and Gustave Eiffel all used slide rules not much fancier than this) but slide rule makers got more and more clever and started adding more scales in better arrangements to do more complex calculations more easily and the next thing you know, some slide rules had as many as 25 to 34 scales!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but more scales means more expensive, then and now. Believe it or not, as expensive as slide rules were, most slide rule makers did NOT make a profit on their slide rules! They seemed to mostly be a promotional item to get people to buy their drafting and engineering supplies, and since slide rules were so highly prized by their owners it seemed to work. You should know that the wood and bamboo, (better than wood) used in slide rules, required at least 2 years or more of preparation before they could even start making the slide rule itself!

Okay, you've read this far and are saying to yourself, "GET TO THE RECOMMENDATIONS ALREADY!
Ok.

Some TOP OF THE LINE SLIDE RULES--- and their makers---

Last and best models, i.e. the height of slide rule tech before the advent of the electronic calculator..

Hemmi - a prolific producer of super high quality bamboo slide rules sold under the Post/Teledyne and Hughes-Owen/Geotec brand names-----? Hemmi 258 / Post 1460 VERSALOG II / Teledyne 44CA-600 / Geotec 341-3012? 25 scales! Some versions more valuable than others...

Hemmi/Sun 257 /post 1491 Chemical Engineering 10" Duplex Rule bamboo 24 unusual scales! Very rare and one of the most valuable slide rules on the market! Hemmi/Sun 259D Expert Mechanical 10" Duplex Rule bamboo 24 scales! Hemmi/Sun 260 Advanced Mechanical 10" Duplex Rule bamboo 25 scales! Hemmi/Sun P261 Engineering 10" Duplex Rule 2 color plastic 24 scales! Hemmi/Sun P262 Engineering 10" Duplex Rule 2 color plastic 25 scales! ?

K+E - The first U.S. manufacturer of slide rules. Extremely high quality, started making slide rules out of mahogany with celluloid facings but much later switched to practically indestructible Ivorite plastic. 68-1100 Deci-lon 10 Ivorite plastic 10" 28 scales! 68-1130 Deci-lon 5 Ivorite plastic 5" 28 scales! pocket size very expensive! 4081-3 or 68-1210 Log Log Duplex Deci-Trig 10" 23 scales! celluloid/mahogany This is an all time favorite.. very easy to use! 4181-3 or 68-1251 Log Log Duplex Deci-Trig Ivorite plastic 23 scales! 10"? 4181-1 or 68-1287 Log Log Duplex Deci-Trig Ivorite plastic 23 scales! 5"

Pickett - a super successful latecomer to the slide rule game, sent their slide rules to the moon! Huge variety of models. Lots of specialty rules! ? ES = Eye Saver yellow T = Traditional off white? Model N4-ES Vector-Type Log Log Duplex 34 scales!! Very Big!? Model N16-ES Dual base Electronic Vector-Type Log Log Duplex 34 scales!? Model N3-ES Power Log Exponential Log Log Duplex 33 scales!? Model N803-ES Dual base Log Log Duplex 28 scales!

Faber Castell - Excellent German manufacturer of drafting equipment. Old as dirt.? NOVO-DUPLEX / NOVO-BIPLEX 2/83N 14" 30 scales!! 11 cursor lines!!! NOVO-DUPLEX / NOVO-BIPLEX 62/83N 6" ?30 scales!! 11 cursor lines!!! multi color accent stripes, plastic body?(both duplex and biplex are the same) NOVO-DUPLEX / NOVO-BIPLEX 2/83 14" ? ?24 scales! 10 cursor lines! NOVO-DUPLEX / NOVO-BIPLEX 62/83 6" ? 24 scales! 10 cursor lines! multi color accent stripes, plastic body. ?Duplex 2/82 Duplex Log Log slide rule 10" 24 scales! 9?cursor lines! Duplex 62/82 Duplex Log Log pocket slide rule 5" 24 scales 9?cursor lines!

Aristo - Excellent German manufacturer plastic body. Very COOOL!
ARISTO HYPERLOG 0972 31 scales! 10 line cursor! Gigantic slide rule!!!14.7"?ARISTO STUDIOLOG 0969 29 scales! 10 line cursor! Gigantic slide rule!!!14.7"?

Nestler - German company the innovated much of slide rule technology, also the choice of Albert Einstein and Wernher von Braun....? 0292 MULTI-MATH or POLY-MATH DUPLEX 28 scales! 6 cursor lines!
2 color plastic?- very futuristic looking

These are all over ebay at $100 to $125 new or lightly used

Had the old yellow elastomer version, then "had" to try something "better." Finally came back to this wedge and couldn't be happier. I sense no loss of spin from the tour grooves. Large face instills confidence and feel is outstanding. I have a black pearl 50 and satin chrome 56... may even replace my forged 60 with one. GREAT wedge,

I a 53 yyrs old man and I didn't have hair on top of my head

I've been using this shampoo for about two months now. I have very fine hair. After the first use I could tell the texture of my hair had definitely changed. The hair seems much thicker and has more body. Overall this was the most dramatic change I've seen with a shampoo which claimed to thicken hair. I can see myself using this shampoo for the long run.

Great product! Easy to apply, and results are acceptable. Would recommend!

THOUGHT receiving the product, DO NOTWe put ENTEGAM NOT SELL AND IF I'M SATISFIED Inquire ... This can only be bad joke. LET MASA incompetence ..

Schwarzkopf Activ M Dr Hoting Shampoo

Product Identifiers
Brand	Schwarzkopf
Model	Activ M Dr Hoting
Key Features
Form	Shampoo
Gender	Men
Size
Size	8.45 fl oz

Excellent fairway wood for better players. Love the smaller head of all the 910Fs

but I chose the 19* to complement my 909F 3W. I like my 909, but this 910 5W is much easier to hit off of tight fairway lies, more consistently. I actually adjusted the loft so it is a little hotter---closer to a 4W loft. This club gives me confidence when I stand over the ball with it in my hands. Love the black face. And the feel and sound from good sweetspot contact is exhilerating. You feel like a pro when you hit this thing squarely.

Got fit for the shaft before buying, but bought one with a different shaft 'cause the price was very attractive from a reputable retailer on Ebay and I was planning to put a high-end custom shaft in it anyway. So, changed the shaft out (which is simple once the Titleist adapter has been installed on the shaft) to something well-suited to my swing, then easily and quickly sold the original new shaft it came with, with the Titleist adapter already on it, It was still new and considered a great shaft itself.

I play all Titleist clubs. I am a 6 handicap and play 3-4 days per week and practice 2 or 3 others every week. I know, if it's a Titleist, it's a top shelf, well made and engineered piece of golf equipment with which I can't go wrong.

Specifically with this camera, there are a couple of issues

The loading process is a pain to get used to. Also there are some mechanical issues with the cameras frame counter on the bottom of it. For instance, the counter does not move for every shot taken. For example the counter may be on frame 12 when you get it, you have to wind a wheel inside and click the shoot button until you get it to go back to S or 1. And thats saying that the counter works at all.

All toy cameras have quirks. This is not my first one. I have a small collection of plastic cameras. The built quality of this was is seriously lacking in some areas. I would NOT pay 30 dollars for this camera under any circumstance.

My experience with my LOMO ACTION SAMPLER was that of a used one, roughly had 10 rolls of film used through it. So to give you an idea of what it takes to get one thats jacked up, there you go. 10 roll of film and things are breaking on it.

So far not impressed with LOMO. You would figure a company with $500 dollar plastic toy cameras would be able to fix silly problems with their cheaper more bought models.

Also I paid about $14 dollars for mine total. Ruined one roll of film trying to figure out the loading process, and wasted 2 hours searching for a manual online that was legible.

Covers good but HArd to use and prefer hair fibre better

Like toppik hair fibre better. This is sticky HArd to make it look good. And very dark i cant use it as à gel cause need to apply carefully. Didnt like the product. But covers good that is positive and they say i Can swim With it not True. I was out one night and begun to rain all the color was all over My face embarresing moment

My experience with my LOMO ACTION SAMPLER was that of a used one

I have always been interested in photography and I have a few serious cameras but I wanted something that I could use in my down-time, something fun, different and amusing so I did some looking around on the net and found the lomo website...in particular I loved this camera b/c of the 4 mini action pics that come out when developed! A must have for any camera collector!