MAKING TRACINGS

After you have decided on, and purchased the kinds of woods and tools you are going to use in your carving, you have come to the first step in actually producing sculpture. This step involves tracing the sculpture out from your plan.

This first step is extremely important to the final quality of your carving. Your tracing will determine the dimensions and proportions of the finished product. If either of these things is too drastically wrong, the carving will not look right and make your model look bad.

First, lay your plan over your light table and turn the light table on. Make sure you have a pencil, eraser, ruler and any other drawing tools you may think that you will need on the table at the time.

Next, take some blank computer paper and lay it over the plan where the carving is that you want to carve. Take some masking tape and gently tape down the corners. Don't press too hard or the tape will stick too fast and you will ruin your plans.
 

Then, take a very sharp pencil and trace right over the outside and inside lines of the carving that you wish to make. Get all of the detail that you can.

In the picture I am tracing the forward face of the carving. Most of the time you will be able to make a second tracing as viewed from the side of the carving that will come from a different section of your model ship plans. This is what I am pictured doing below.

Below is a picture of the finished tracing with the light table turned off.

The next step is to cut your tracings out. I do this with a #11 X-Acto blade.

And below are the finished tracings!

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