Just Wondering...

[SingleMalt]

I'm wondering where everyone's getting their patterns from?  I've been copying photos from RCA and enlarging them on a copier until I get the listed LOP.  Thanks in advance.

[rich pierce]

Like you, many building a blank start by laying out the parts on a long paper then fiddle with pictures enlarged to the desired dimensions. Thankfully Shumway and some others included some measurements.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Rich has nailed it.  Although there are some great patterns out there (Eric VonAuschwege comes to mind immediately), many of us draw our own, using the measurements from good photos or originals together with given measurements, to extrapolate all the measurements we need.

[Mike Brooks]

I have always drawn my own until recently. Now I use the KRA discs as a guide....still ends up drawn nearly all by hand as I have to adjust drop and pull.

[TommyG]

I lay out all the parts on paper as well.  Usually as long as I have a few dimensions for the photo, barrel length in particular, then I will scale the photo and go from there.  If no dimensions, I proportion certain things off the photo, i.e.- forearm length, comb length, etc..  I find it way easier doing this in metric(mm).  I do this in tandem with the parts I will be using.  Mike is right though about the KRA discs.  I bought one at the Morgantown show a few weeks back.  Great photos and key dimensions as well.

[B.Barker]

I use a variety of ways. Sometimes I use patterns from others some times I blowup photo's and other time I draw out my own. When I make my own pattern I make a try stock out of poplar 2x6 first to make sure everything feels right and fits. Sometimes I'll make a try stock when using photo's of originals to make sure they work. Some original stocks do not fit a shooter well.

[Elnathan]

The last time I drew up plans for a rifle I used a couple rulers to mark out the critical dimensions, including the drop at the comb and the drawlength I wanted, and then used a set of 12" carpenter's dividers to figure out the relative proportions of the original. The original I was looking at has a big breeched barrel (1.20") with a fairly short draw length, and I was trying to use a D-weight barrel with a slightly longer draw length yet still keep the flavor of the original architecture, so a straight copy of the original proportions was out of the question. With the dividers I could quickly measure the relative sizes of such things as the buttplate height and the length of the comb, and then figure out the same relative proportions for my interpretation. With a lot of trial and error I did come up with something that will hopefully look like it came out of the same shop as the original.

My mother just showed my a really nifty artists' method of transferring a small sketch onto a larger canvas that I successfully used to make a rough full-sized drawing of a war club from a small picture printed off the internet. It is a variation on the old "draw a grid" method of transferring a drawing, but uses diagonals to establish a proportion instead of a square grid. I need to play around with it a bit more, but it seems like it is going to be a really useful technique.

[Pukka Bundook]

I'd be pleased to hear more of this "X" grid when you have it figured, ElNathan.

[oldtravler61]

  The  x- grid I use was taught in art class many years ago..! Take your picture of whatever you want to copy. Then break it down into one inch squares. Applies to about anything. Very accurate...!
   Oldtravler

[Elnathan]

  The  x- grid I use was taught in art class many years ago..! Take your picture of whatever you want to copy. Then break it down into one inch squares. Applies to about anything. Very accurate...!
   Oldtravler

The way my Mom does it, one ends up with triangles, not squares. Same basic idea, but you start with diagonal lines running from corner to corner, which if drawn on your blank canvas/paper at the same angle (easily checked by placing the initial picture on the canvas and extending the line with a ruler on the blank) you get a bigger grid exactly the same proportions as the original grid. After that you draw a horizontal line and a vertical line exactly halfway on both sheets, intersecting at the middle where your two diagonals cross. At that point you have a set of eight triangles. You can then sub-divide then as needed by drawing additional diagonals. The technique is illustrated here as the "Van Gogh way," section 3:

http://www.howtodrawjourney.com/grid-drawing.html

What we figured out is that one can make a scaled drawing by selecting a known dimension on a pictured object and using that as the reference point instead of the canvas as a whole. So with the warclub I did, I drew two vertical lines on the reference drawing at rear and front of the club, and two vertical lines on the canvas 22" apart. Then I just transferred the drawing as in the website above but lining up the lines I had drawn instead of the edges of the canvas. Took me awhile to understand how to do things, but once it clicked it went fine except for issues with sloppily drawn reference lines that caused some distortion before I figured out that the didn't intersect the middle properly (hard to see on a dark reference pic, as it turned out.)

[flehto]

I 've only built Bucks County, Lancaster and Hawken rifles.....the BC buttstocks are made using  a template made from a   blowup of a Shuler in RCA1, the Lancasters are done freehand and also the Hawkens.....Fred

[Curtis]

I have used one of those old overhead projector things that I picked up for a few bucks at an auction before.  You can blow an image up on a wall to whatever size you need (or matches given dimensions), and then "trace" the outlines etc.

Also I purchased about fifteen or so of the drawings Jack brooks was offering several years back and squirreled them away.  I have used several of them already and have parts that will work with a few more of them when the time comes to use them.

One other thing I have done is to buy a set of drawing from Track or another vendor, the "tweeked" then to make them work better as most of those are rather generic.  If you have one of those type drawing and some photos of an original you can make them work for you.   These tow guns started with the same "Vincent" drawing from Track and were modified on the blank to work.  Note one is a half stock and the other is a full stock -the drawing was of a half stock.


















Curtis