7 replies to this topic

[Hans van der Maarel]

I may be getting involved in yet another globe construction project and for that I'm looking for some information on the actualy physical production process (I can do the maps, no worries there).

You see, this is going to be a globe that's being produced the old fashioned way, with paper gores stuck on to a (hollow) sphere. Does anybody know what process was used in the old days to stick the paper gores to the globe? Any special kind of paper? Any limitations to the size of the gores? Would those limitations be relative to the diameter? Any special kind of glue or other treatment to the paper to make it more easy to mold?

[Michael Schmeling]

You can find some interesting info in the german Wikipedia:

Globusherstellung

Don't know if it helps you - I guess you can understand it sufficiently?

[Nick H]

A couple of links to globes and gores at Google Books. The old ones are always the best.

http://tinyurl.com/2vwlpyj
http://tinyurl.com/32m43lc

Regards, N.

[frax]

Hans - I have no input of value to guide you - but please post your experiences here afterwards!

[Hans van der Maarel]

Hans - I have no input of value to guide you - but please post your experiences here afterwards!

Will do

Thanks for the links by the way, Michael and Nick, I have been rather busy so I haven't been able to go through them in detail yet.

[Dennis McClendon]

Fifteen years ago, I had the chance to tour the Replogle Globe manufacturing plant just outside Chicago, which mostly made schoolboy globes.

They printed the Northern and Southern Hemispheres as gores splayed out from the poles, then die-cut those. Those thin four-color prints were then pressure-glued onto cardboard hemispheres that had previously been molded by some intense (and unseen) pressure and steam process. A northern and southern hemisphere were placed onto a jig and aligned by eye and glued together, and then the equator was added with plastic tape to hide the seam.

So I would solve the problem of fabricating the hemispheres first, and then design the maps to fit. If it's a one-off, papier-maché over a spherical balloon or exercise ball might be the easiest way, though it will be time-consuming to get a smooth surface.

[Hans van der Maarel]

First sneak peek:

 Screen_shot_2010_12_09_at_19.06.34.png   216.88K   72 downloads

24 artboards in Illustrator. Not sure whether I go for this setup (splayed out like Dennis suggests), or just 12 pole-to-pole gores. It depends on the printer size my client can get his hands on. This is for a 40" diameter globe.

Shifted the whole thing 4 degrees east so that the gore edges work out a little bit nicer with regards to some countries.

[Michael Schmeling]

Flamingpear

offers the Flexify 2 plugin for Photoshop which makes gores automatically.
(It can also do a lot of projections which are of interest to cartographers.)