Odin's Toy Factory

  Scroll Saw Patterns for a Fat Fendered Freaky Ford Attached With Blue Tape   I try every method of attaching patterns that I find. I use shelf liner for larger projects or where I need to see through it to avoid some defect in the wood. Otherwise, it sits on the shelf because I find it to be a pain to use. Gluing the pattern directly on the wood and removing it with mineral spirits works well, except that the adhesive gets into the wood, and there is no way to get it out. It can take a day or two for the mineral spirits to evaporate from the wood. I can't do anything with the piece until it's done. I use this method for delicate pieces where the extra time and the adhesive residue aren't a problem. Clear packing tape I don't like to use. I find the shiny surface to be annoying, and I have issues with it lifting. I used a lot of it when I first began using paper patterns. I tried taping the wood patterns and applying the tape first, and gluing the pattern to it. Neithe...

I'm not an expert with either of the software packages discussed here. Once I know what I want to do I ask the Google oracle for help and it always provides. If you have questions, you should ask Google. There are a lot of videos on YouTube, and some books are available. The learning curve is steep. If you are only going to make one toy and don't intend to make batches or modify the patterns, it may not be worth the effort to learn about these tools. This isn't a tutorial. It is a simple explanation of how I use Gimp and Inkscape in my toymaking. The first step I take when making something for the first time is to convert the patterns to SVG. I load the bit map patterns into Gimp and clean them up. The bitmaps get copied into Inkscape and converted into the SVG format. Why? First I get sharp, precise lines when you print the patterns. When you print from bitmaps the edges of the lines are jagged and fuzzy. If you want to enlarge the pattern, it gets worse. With the ...