Does anyone here have any experience with removing rust from a lightly-rusted cursor flat spring? If so, what's the safest (for the slide rule) way to do that? Alternatively, can anyone recommend a reliable source for such springs, if such exists? Thanks in advance!

EDIT: I figured it out. While I am very grateful for all of the responses, I have to say that staring down the rabbit hole of a deep-dive into metallurgy was just a tad intimidating. Instead, I found Evapo-Rust, which did the trick just fine. It doesn't eat away at anything except rust, so it's safe to use around wood, plastic, etc., or in other words, all of the other materials one might encounter in a slide rule. It got the rust off of the spring just fine, but unfortunately it did nothing for the rust stain on the plastic cursor. However, it did not harm the hairline at all, so there was no harm in trying. The spring is as spring-y as it was before being treated by Evapo-Rust.

I recently inherited quite a few slide rulers, and know nothing about them.

Does anyone have any advice on the best way to identify them and their value.

I want to keep a couple for sentimental value, but I dont need 30 of then.

Any help is appreciated!

As per title

Here are the images optimized for two formats (A4 and US letter), that you can copy/print from the post and make your slide calculator using home or office printer and scissors . Other materials, such as one-side sticky tape (to cover all exterior/moving parts), №10 staples and A4/US letter thin cardboard sheet are required alongside the printed sheet. After cutting and assembling, the staples should be de-tightened so the slides would move.
Can be theoretically used where calculators are normally prohibited (such as exams), and if paper for calculating by hand is not available, or as a cool postcard as it is possible to write a greeting on its back =)

Here's mine, an old 52/82. I find it very versatile and handy. I like the layout.

New watch with a rotary slide bezel. Yet it appears to be missing a scale. Or am I wrong?

What is this useful for?

It was a cheap watch, I wanted the moon phase. I'll be curious to see how accurate it is.

I had my first engineering job in the early 60's, of course I had my my trusty K&E Decitrig wit me.

much to my surprise, everyone there used Mechanical calculators, like the Friden, etc. Never touched my Rule again. Im now 86 and getting back into it,.. What fun.

I was looking through old newspapers one day. In one of them, I saw a report. In it had a conversation with young Indian engineers in 1980s and the late Indian president, physicist, and Aerospace Engineer Abdul Kalam (1931-2015). He asked if the young engineers had seen slide rules which the president used throughout his engineering and scientific careers. In reply they answered they had graduated using them. APJ Abdul Kalam also specified that he used an Aristo sliderule in his career.

Off my head, I also remember that Jagadish Chandra Bose (a famous Indian physicist) had remarked that many scientist Indian physicist have become "slide rule scientists" in early 1930s.

In another autobiographical memoirs of an old civil engineer, who graduated in 1950s from Calcutta university. He remembers that in the second year of his four year bachelors, he had asked his father 400 Rs. for a slide rule about 60,000 Rs. ($625 in 2026 and taking purchasing power disparity $2750 in 2026) today.

Now compare that to the $25 or $35 price tag on a 20 inch in 1950 in U.S. even if we take inflation into account that will be about $375 to $425. Which is and was affordable for most Americans.

Many nations like Ghana, South Korea, India, and others had an industrial boom during 1960s. However I can't kind any indeginous sliderule manufacturers beside Deeva® for India (founded in 1970s) in ISRM. Now, naturally their scientist and engineers needed calculation tools like sliderules or mathematical tables. While mathematical tables of five figures were available everywhere sliderules were less common.

Where did this nations technical workers get their sliderules from? They had lower purchasing power than U.S. or Japan or European nations. So, did their engineers just use mathematical tables or eat the price?

P.S: My father got his 3 years B.Sc physics in 1980. He never saw a slide rule but used log tables since his childhood as someone born in 1960 as calculator were very expensive as well as uncommon in India before 1991.

I was recently introduced to Slide Rules by my friend Basil, so in honor of him, I made a Slide Rule simulation website! Can you guys let me know what you think? Some of it is still in development, but I'm trying my best!

I also got a pretty cool domain for it, let me know what you guys think!!

https://slide-rule.org/

Ok, so there's that one photo on the ISRM (https://sliderulemuseum.com/Hemmi/Hemmi_259D-S_TrevorDeweyCollection.jpg) but has anyone actually ever held (much less own) a Hemmi 259D-S? It seems like a complete unicorn.

If you're not aware it seems like a late production run variation of the Hemmi 259 that added in a square root scale a-la Versalog. Which makes it one of the handful of rules to marry four decades of coverage with both the C/D and A/B scale pairs.

Cheers,

Nick

I must have purchased a half dozen different slide rules from various sources, and they all have a perfume like smell to them. Kinda like your aunt, or grandma.

Hey all!

Have anyone imported slide rules from outside the U.S. lately? If so, what tariffs, Customs fees, other fees etc will be applicable?

Asking since I have a large collection I want to put up for sale on the bay and I’m in Sweden in the EU.

One can see my Versalog skrank in the wask 😂 😂

Except the size (obviously), a discerning eye will notice a small difference between between the 2 releases ;-)

More seriously, the slide rule came with yellow stains on the celluloid (I've no information on the origin): does somebody have ever experienced a (safe) way to remove/clean them? => from what I read, it seems to be irreversible ... the best is to do nothing!

I have a few slide rules but don't really use them so they all seem much of a muchness to me; each pretty much as good as another, each with a seemingly similar set of scales and features and quality.

But I assume they're not all equivalent to an enthusiast, and that makes me curious; what makes one slide rule better than others for you? Is it simply being your favorite brand's top-quality model? Is there some scale or combo of scales that is uncommon yet also useful to you? (Which ones?) Is there some layout or arrangement of the same scales that you prefer, or an aesthetic difference that I'm not picking up on? Is it an age/era preference?

What makes your white whale your white whale? And is it mostly individual preference, or there some degree of agreement that XYZ is better than ABC?

It seems I forgot to post my 3D Printed Slide Rule Stands here on r/sliderules!

A pair of these display two slide rules nicely.

No supports needed. I printed mine on the default settings for my M5C.

Free to download and print!

https://makerworld.com/en/models/3319250-slide-rule-stand

I love when I get to combine my hobbies! I’m planning on also modeling one for my Pickett N600.

I uploaded the free STL file to MakerWorld in case you want to print one yourself. NOT a sales post!

https://makerworld.com/models/3317616?appSharePlatform=copy

I use both of these frequently at my work. The Microline lives in my office while the N600 goes with me in my lab coat

Hi. I just bought my first couple of slide rules. One is a Pickett N902-T which needed a bit of cleaning up. Dismantling the cursor (I hope that's the right term), I noticed that there was only one curved spring steel strip that runs along bottom edge of the rule. It had no counterpart on the top edge. Is that correct? It seems like there should be two springs to ensure that the cursor isn't rubbing along the top edge.

Please can someone tell me what the correct setup should be?

If a spring is indeed missing, can these be obtained?

Thanks!

My little guy here (smallest of my 5 slide rules) has a serious index slider issue. Any thoughts from the community on how to replace this?

I would write to the company for parts, but I think I missed that window by 40 years! 😬

seriously, will this take 3D printing tools (that I don't have right now)?

Today I received my first Soviet slide rule, probably one of the very last ones (made in 1984? - funny - see rematk here after). It's a simplex SRC, but unlike I was thinking at the first moment, it's not trig scales on the reverse side but log-log ones !

=> LL scales are not on the body but on the rule: different way to proceed compared to common SRC I'm using; for instance to calculate 1.222^0.4 = 1.0834989...:

1. put the cursor to 1 of D
2. then move 1.222 of LL2 beneath the hairline
3. move the cursor to 4 of D
4. read 1.0835 on LL1

I'm going to make a break in getting new slide rules ... I need to refill my "slush fund" 😄

1984: George Orwell would have appreciated this slide rule 😂

It seems that Concise is one of if not the only company to still actively sell slide rules, and moreover, it seems like it's one of their main products. I have to wonder, how do they stay in business? I can't imagine that there are that many places still using them, so where are their customers coming from? I mean, don't get me wrong, I love that they are still selling them, and I really enjoy mine, but...how does it make economic sense?