Making Scale Designs On The Computer

There seems to be some interest in seeing what the final, finished razor and scales will look like using the Micarta material which I made for my article on creating Micarta scale material. - http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...-material.html - Well, I’m not quite that far along yet, but the process of creating those scales suggested another small article regarding the use of the computer to help generate scale cutting and drilling designs.

Naturally, every single one of you reading this has some sort of a computer, be it Mac, PC, Linux box or whatever. If, in addition to that, you have a printer and (hopefully) a flatbed scanner, then you have all the hardware required to do pretty much the same as I typically do when creating razor scale designs.

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NOTE: I’m going to cover this procedure in a very broad and very basic way - just showing you the steps which I go through along with a few tips. I would love to go into more detail, but you all have different computers, using different scanners, printers and graphics programs, so that it would just be impossible for me.

Which graphics programs to use is a large question. For photo retouch I like the Adobe Photoshop. For vector (linework) I like the Adobe Illustrator. But these are personal choices and it must be admitted that the Adobe products have always been somewhat expensive. But we are not doing anything fancy here, so almost any programs worth their salt should do the job. There is even pretty good freeware available which will do everything we need to do for this project. Two freeware programs I can suggest are The Gimp for photo retouching GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program and Inkscape for vector work Inkscape. Draw Freely.

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Let’s now turn our eyes to the razor which I am planning to restore. The old scales are of some sort of wood. They are pretty beaten up and kind of overpower this blade. Surprisingly, although they appear large they are actually too short for the blade to close properly. I’m going to replace them with a new set made from my Micarta.

By the way, take a look at those rivets. Wow, are those oversized monsters, or what!? In truth, the pins are cut off nails and those round ‘heads’ are actually blobs of melted lead solder (ouch!). I’ll just reach for a metal cutting file and we can continue with the article…

Here is the blade, removed from the scales. Notice that dimple slightly forward of the rear pivot hole. The scales were just slightly short and the man who put the wooden scales on this razor thought to redrill that hole so that he might move the blade back to give it a bit more room. He didn’t realize that a razor is essentially tool steel and is a pretty tough contender for ordinary drill bits. Other than that, the blade isn’t in such bad shape. I’ll spend a few quiet hours sanding and polishing to clean it up. But you have already seen many articles here on the forums which give you information about refinishing blades, so I’ll spare you another go-round. Time to start designing the scales.

The first step is to put the blade down onto our flatbed scanner in order to get an image into the computer. Here is the blade lying on my old Epson 2400 Color scanner.

Some of you might be saying, “Isn’t my digital camera good enough for this purpose?” Well, yes and no. A digital camera will take a fine picture, but has two characteristics which make it a little less than ideal for this purpose.

The first problem is that a camera does not take a truly ‘flat’ image like a flatbed scanner. There will always be problems with perspective and some amount of distortion. A flatbed scanner – even a cheap one – will always spit out a flat, distortion-free image, which is what we want for our purposes.

The other problem with a digital camera is that one has no real idea of the size of whatever one has photographed. The brilliant thing about a flatbed scanner is that when we get an image out of it, that image already has, encoded within it, the physical size of the scan. This means that if you don’t somehow screw up or change that size encoding, you should be able to print out that scanned image and end up with a same-size print of what you scanned out in the real world. It is exactly this property that allows us to design a scale shape around the scanned image, spit it out onto paper and use that printout as a reliable cutting and drilling layout.

Having said that, it is still possible to follow the same procedure using a digital camera, but you, yourself, will be responsible for setting up the shot properly (this is essentially copy photography) and then later on the additional steps of resizing your image so that it prints out at the correct size in the real world. Any discussion of those techniques is definitely outside the scope of this article. So, moving right along…

Here is a view of the scanner interface. There are so many scanner programs out there that yours is bound to be different.

I’m not scanning this with that white flip-up cover down behind the razor, so that my background is black. This isn’t a great problem for us. In fact, we are also not concerned with color or even absolute sharpness of detail. What we want is essentially a silhouette to show us the shape of the blade and the location of the rear pivot hole.

Here is the scanned image of my blade. Pretty nice. :)

I then went into a photo retouch program and masked out the black of the background. Yeah, yeah, I said it wasn’t necessary, but I like a clean presentation and it certainly helps keep the graphics simple and obvious. But, like I said, this step isn’t strictly necessary, as you will see later.

I’ve loaded the image into my vector (linework) program and have used it as a background reference around which to design my scale form.

I have made a razor scale form which I think fits fairly well to this particular blade. I have also indicated where the pins will go. I very clearly put a centering “X” where the pins are, as this will help me later on in the shop when I have to start punching and drilling.

I’m not going to cover all of the different aspects of making good scales, but here are a few hints.

Never forget to make your scales wide enough so that the bottom of the blade has no chance to poke out and cut you when the blade is closed (see ‘A’ and ‘B’).

Designing scales on the computer this way allows us to ‘see’ the required clearance for the front wedge ahead of time. I made two arcs (‘C’) in the linework program, both centered on the rear pivot hole (‘D’). One arc just touches the absolute end of the razor blade. The second arc has a radius which is a slim 1/16” ( 2mm ) wider. Having those arcs to look at lets me decide how far the toe of the scales has to extend in order to give me good, stable amount of area for the wedge and front pin.

Notice the extension of the scales behind the rear pin (‘D’). When using Micarta I could actually make that shorter, but when using other materials like wood, plastic or bone it is a good thing as it adds strength and somewhat reduces the tendency of the scales to split around that hole.

Something to keep in mind is the appropriate use of the ‘layers’ features within your graphics programs. You can see that the elements of my drawing are arranged so that each has a separate layer. The original scanned image is in the back (lowest layer) and the linework has been added on top of it. This keeps our image clean, organized and manageable.

I’m also using the layer visibility feature. Just before printing this out to paper, I turned off the visibility of the layers with the arcs and the background photo. See, I told you we didn’t really need to do any fancy work on that image. ;)

Don’t forget to save your work. You might find that you have to print it out again. Another possibility is to take the form you developed here and scale it up or down, or subtly alter its form to fit other blades.

Here is the printout of the scale form. All I have to do now is cut it out and stick it onto my scale material.

If you have any concerns that your printout does not match the size of your scanned object, then the best thing to do is run a size test. What you see below is a printout of a measuring tape which I scanned. The printout definitely matches the dimensions of the real-world object.

Should you decide to use a digital camera instead of a flatbed scanner, you could include an object of known size (like a ruler) in the same shot as your razor blade. It will assist you in sizing the image correctly.

Last of all, we are going to stick our printout onto the scale material.

My adhesive of choice has always been good, old rubber cement. It is inexpensive, does not stain, goes on easily and (more importantly) comes off easily when you no longer want it.

Rubber cement can be used on only a single surface, but in doing so, you end up with a weak bond. We want something stronger. To this end, we will use the rubber cement in exactly the same way that one uses contact cement. We will brush it onto both surfaces to be joined. Let it dry for about five or ten minutes. Then bring the two rubber cement coated surfaces together. Press firmly or even tap lightly with a soft, rubber hammer. When done correctly, that bond will hold up to sanding operations and even when cutting the Micarta with a scroll saw. You will find that you can still pry the surfaces apart with relative ease when you are finished. And any leftovers of rubber cement can just be rubbed away with the fingers.

And here is the final result. The Micarta sheets have been rubber cemented to each other and the scale printout has been rubber cemented on top of them.

I’m ready to head off into the shop. But that is for another time…

- Ignatz :cool:

Well done.
This can also do done by hand (which is what I do) but if you want to get REALLY exact, then I suppose the computer is the way to go. I just find that using a french curve gives me good results faster than playing with splines in a drawing program. Once you establish your limits and style, it's a game of connect the dots.

I agree absolutely. :rock: It is perfectly possible to do everything I've indicated on a piece of paper and get excellent results. The computer is just another tool with - in this case - some tiny advantages: namely being able to spit out a printout over and over again and being able to reuse and alter one's artwork if need be.

Sterling stuff, Ignatz. Not quite sure why you did not put these into the Wiki directly (where they belong, and are easier to write and read), but that's fine. Need any help, just let us know.

Thanks!
Robin

Now you should make those scales in 3D and send me the files so I can print them out. :)

That would be fun to try, but the only 3D program that I currently have access to (Blender) does not support export in either of the formats you listed in your thread.

WOW that's really cool. I tried to download the vector program however it will only work with Mac Leopard not OSX. I will try doing this on Illustrator.
I would love to be able to create scales and have repeatable format for them as well as saving them in the computer.

Great thread! I use pretty much the same method, but I've been too lazy to make a thread.

If you don't mind I'd like to add an optional step.

Once I have the shape that I like, I like to see how different materials would look on a particular blade before I get started on the actual scales.
If you look around online it's easy to find stock photos of nearly every type of wood. Then select outline of the shape layer of the scales, then copy/paste. Then go into blending options and add bevel/emboss and contour.

Here are a few quick and dirty examples using your blade and shape. Usually I would play with pinning options as well at this point, but this is just a quickie :|
Amboyna burl, Bocote and bloodwood;

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Originally Posted by ignatz

That would be fun to try, but the only 3D program that I currently have access to (Blender) does not support export in either of the formats you listed in your thread.

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Quite the contrary! Blender's features page lists STL support and there's a screenshot of the export options (fourth export option down):

http://www.blender.org/uploads/pics/export.jpg

I say this because I desperately want to try it but no pressure if you're not interested.

I use a similar method. I first photograph the razor with a ruler, then I'll work on a design with illustrator and print the outline in the right scale.

Here's an example:

Big Bubba;

That is a good idea for visualization! I skip that 'visualization' step since I usually already have my chosen scale material in hand, but, yeah, great idea!

Commiecat;

My god, you are right... and I've always been lookin' right past it. Oh stupid me. :gaah: If I find some time I can start playing around with some simple forms in Blender and see if I end up with something good enough for a try-out.

Piet;

Yes, that is also a very useful approach.

Very nice walkthrough! I have thought about using the a program (specifically the Gimp) to experiment with different scale designs, but have not had any time to get to it. I really like the amount of detail that you have given and the step by step images. Also, the idea of using images of different scale materials is great and really helps to visualize what the final product would look like.


Thanks so much for posing this!

Zac

Very well done, and will be a nice addition to the wiki for use of new technology. I am wondering if you might be able to also take a scale half and copy it, then bring it into the program, message its look, then do an outline of it, and use that over the blade? I'm going to give it a try later and see. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Ray

rayman;

I did that very thing once. I had a razor with broken scales. After removing them from the blade, I scanned the one, complete scale (the flat, inner side, of course) in order to generate a replacement cutting pattern. It works well.

- Ignatz

That was a great tutorial. I really look forward to seeing your how-to post. I tend to be a French curve, tracing paper, and big eraser type of guy, but I think I might give the a CAD program a try next time I design. Thanks for putting the time and effort into this post.

Charlie

Just an addition to a great idea.
You can make multiples of a blade shape along the paper and sketch different scale designs.
My scanner is more accurate if I go crosswise. I can then use the simple paint or photo program that come with a camera to copy and past multiple copies on one sheet of paper.
Respectfully
~Richard

I love it!. Now if only you had a little CNC mill handy (G)

Is there a pluin or procedure that will analys the razor image to locate a,b,c,d then plot selected points on a separate layerdo that there csn be a starting point in seconds vd minutes?

Wow! Thanks for the amazing thread! I actually make everything on the computer and have found it a pain to figure out if I have the right dimensions on photoshop. I am not the best of artists and drawing a concept that I liked has eluded me. Majority of my designing is actually done with my grinder, 8 just get the basic concept from a printed stencil I use.

Additionally I would like to try and make razor concepts with this as well being able to change scale shape to see what fits best with the custom razor would be a tremendous help

There are program plug_in's or separate programs which will take a scanned scale or blade profile and convert it to the drafting/ drawing software you have. They are usually a PDF format
There you have the ability to modify the shapes. I would suggest doing so on overlay layers. That way you have the original dimensions and shape to play with.
~Richard

This is a nice way of doing things. Never thought to do it like that.

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Originally Posted by spazola

That was a great tutorial. I really look forward to seeing your how-to post. I tend to be a French curve, tracing paper, and big eraser type of guy, but I think I might give the a CAD program a try next time I design. Thanks for putting the time and effort into this post.

Charlie

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Mr. FancyPants eh... :)

I basically hold the razor tight to a piece of cardboard and draw the outline.
Then I draw the scales freehand over the outline of the razor, cut it out, and draw the outline of the cardboard on the scales material I work with.

That said I only do it this way because I avoid using my computer when I can. I spend 10 hours per day using a computer as a sysadmin. :)

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Originally Posted by Bruno

This is a nice way of doing things. Never thought to do it like that.



Mr. FancyPants eh... :)

I basically hold the razor tight to a piece of cardboard and draw the outline.
Then I draw the scales freehand over the outline of the razor, cut it out, and draw the outline of the cardboard on the scales material I work with.

That said I only do it this way because I avoid using my computer when I can. I spend 10 hours per day using a computer as a sysadmin. :)

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That's way to hard , it akin to using a package manager to update your computer and using Fog to push to M$ clients

Now...for the lazy:
These templates have been passed around for many years, and I have no idea who was the originator:
[URL="http://straightrazorpalace.com/workshop/95713-came-across-original-scale-design-pdf-today.html"]Scale templates
The collected scale designs are in PDF format. I printed one copy on paper and another on transparency stock. There are a bazillion different scales in full size to chose from. The transparency sheet stock allows me to check blade clearance, chose a design, and fit the scales to the blade.
Also at the Coup Chou Forum they have the designs also and available there in DXF also. I lost the particular page so you will have to chase it down for yourself.
These files will be imported by a drafting program. The only difficulty is that the files then must be converted from raster to vector, should you wish to CNC a batch of scales. That may be done manually but is a pain!!

I still use Bruno's method the most!! :brunoisright
Have fun!
~Richard