Thread: Quick Favour - Scale Patterns

I kinda thought I might be out of luck on this one.... Thanks for the pointers none the less though. My neighbour is a graphic designer so maybe I can poach some free assistance from her.

Congrats to those who can free hand some of the more impressive patterns though. Unless I stick with tracing the original scales I end up with something vaguely similar to the art in my daughters kindergarten class.

I could always say that I believe in maintaining a "classic" look to excuse my lack of creativity. Any thoughts?

Originally Posted by rossco

I could always say that I believe in maintaining a "classic" look to excuse my lack of creativity. Any thoughts?

No shame in that!

Originally Posted by Philadelph

No shame in that!

Aye.

Even the classic scales underwent some serious designing before production.

On a positive note. What I did was to draw around an old scale on cardboard and the experiment from there. When I was happy with a couple I then cut out hardboard and test fitted using the pin holes from old scales as makers

On from there you could find pictures of raxors/scales from sites copy to your pc. Print out in b&w - reducing the size to suit then do as above.

Scissors/cardboard and some ingenuity - you can get loads of variations

Beauty doing a prototype is that you can see what it looks like and do not waste wood

For a complete amateur like me this is important

The majority of scales that I make came from one basic scale design that I made a while ago and some slight variations there of to acompany different sized blades. I really like the way they look, so, I haven't really needed to make anymore.

I designed them using photoshop, but any graphics/drawing program that supports bezier curves (ie. pen tool) should work just fine. First I scanned in some existing scales and some razor blades so that I had the flat profile view of them. Then I opened up the images and traced out the existing shapes with bezier curves so that I had the basic shapes to work with. After that I just messed around with the curves to come up with my designs. I'd digitally overlayed the scale design on the razors I scanned so I could get an idea of how the blade would sit in it. Once I was satisfied I just printed them out, transfered the template to cardboard and used those.

all of my scales start as the traced blade and then i draw the scales to fit and mode how i want to get the look im after
then i cut out the scales and the spacer trace that on the Ti and grind it close

that way i can least make sure every thing will fit and clear when im done