Quick Tip - Keep it clean.

From time to time, as I'm surfing the net, I come across some very useful little tid-bits of information.  Some times they make me go "Ah ha", other times it makes me wonder why I didn't think of that myself.   At any rate, as I come across them, I'll post them here and share them with you.

I picked this one up while watching a training video late last night.

Even the most meticulous clean freaks among us will, over time,  pick up some graphite on our fingers and/or the side of our hand.  If you're not careful, you'll wind of grinding that graphite into your paper and ruin your project.   So, from time to time you have to stop and wash your hands with soap and water.   Well, did you ever notice that you can't completely remove all that ground in graphite from your hands?  You can't because the graphite resists the water.  One solution is to squirt some liquid hand soap onto your hands first, using no water. and scrub the graphite out.  Then use a paper towel to remove the graphite and soap residue.  After that you can wash you hands as you normally would and you're good to go... or are you? 

Removing graphite as described above creates another problem that you must be aware of.  I don't care how long you dry your hands, you can never get them "completely" dry.  There's always going to be some moisture that will just take time to evaporate, unless you have one of those commercial hand driers that you see in public toilets.  Getting any sort of moisture on your paper will surly ruin it and many soaps contain moisturizers that will transfer onto your paper and resist any graphite in that area.

So, what I do, to save time and my work, is keep a bottle of liquid soap "NEAR" my drawing table.  Not "on it", mind you,  but "NEAR" it.  When I'm in need of a quick clean up I grab the soap, turn away from my work, and follow the suggestion above.  The only difference being, I don't wash my hands with soap and water when I'm done.  Instead, after removing the soap residue and graphite with a paper towel,  I grab a bottle of one of those alcohol based hand sanitizers and give them a quick scrub.  The alcohol base removes the soap residue and dries quickly.  I can now get back to my work without ever leaving my work area.  Just make sure the hand sanitizer does not contain any sort of moisturizer.

Anyway, hope this helps.