Second Step:
Posted by Colonel Griffon — Here is the next step in my weapon build. I brought my sketch into Adobe Illustrator and traced it. After tracing the sketch I put the new drawing over a grid where every square represents and inch. Then I scaled the drawing so that the length of the weapon was at four feet. The it was time to tweak the drawing—making edits to the look and being very precise on the measurements of all the parts. The reason I want to be correct with my numbers from the start is to make the build easier, especially when it comes time to cut the materials that will eventually become the final piece.
After I was satisfied with the look of the weapon I printed it out. Since the drawing is so large I had to print with the tile setting. The drawing above took 24 sheets of paper to print at 100% (including overlap around all sides for trimming the unneeded white boarded). Then I taped all the sheets together so I had the full drawing as a reference. Once I am ready to cut pieces I will lay the blueprint over my material with a sheet of carbon paper in between. So far this is the best way that I have found for transferring the blueprint to wood, MDF, plastic, etc.
Next step, cutting out the parts.
