Thread: Quick Favour - Scale Patterns

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