Hello! As I often see, Many people are plagued with the seemingling impossible (to them) task of making a template thats the right scale size. Diriving from other ways of doing this; I have made my own, which, for me, has worked better.
Stuff you need:
1. you are going to need a printed photo of the instrument you are trying to make. You will also have to know something about the specifications of the body, and if you cant find that out, you can use the scale length (from the bridge to the nut, I beleave) which you should be able to find either one by searching the net.
2. You will need a peice of paper big enough to contain the size of the body. If you can't get a single peice of paper that big than just NEATLY tape peices of printer paper together (tape on both sides).
3. A measuring tool is absoluely essential, wheather it be a tape measure, ruler, whatever you can accurately use.
4. A calculator definatley comes in handy.
5. A couple other peices of paper; for jotting down measurements is also a good idea to have around.
6. A good straight egde (optional)
7. A little math knowlege is priceless here
Procedure:
1. Once you have some kind of info on the specs; say you know how long the overall body length is; then you would measure how long the body-length in the picture is. Say, for example, the body in the picture is 4 inches, and the real body length is 20 inches. Your picture would be 5:1 scale (or is it 1:5 ?? doesnt matter about that i guess) because 20 divided by 4 is 5 get it? What this means is that all the measurements you take of the picture must be multiplyed by 5 (or what ever you determine the scale in the picture is). the same logic applies if you use scale length.
2. Once you know what that is it would be a good idea to find the other measurements (how tall it is, the smallest part of the "waist" of the body ect) using the same method.
3. Now that you know the length and height, I'd advise you to make a box within the paper of the using the length and height only. If you have excess paper, which is best to have at least a few cm's of, make sure your lines are straight by measuring the amount of excess paper of all four sides, maybe you should write them down, and make sure the line is straight by measuring the distance from the edge of the paper to the line in several places and "eye-ball it" at an angle to see any curves and straighten them out. Do this with all sides individualy. Also do this on picture.
4. I would say it would be a good idea to mark at notable areas (highest points, longest points, slimmest points, cutaways, and any other place you want to mark) by measuring (on the picture) how far across from a the closest corner of your box, multiply that by the scale size (the example was five remember) then measure the multiplyed number to the bigger box and mark it on the line. Then, do the same with the height to know how far up to mark. I've been working on doing this in many place so I could have a sort of "dot-to-dot" set up. This is alot of work, just a warning. but if this is something you really want, it will prove worth it.
Well that's about it. Hope-fully common sense can continue where I left off. But if I havent made some of (or all of) it clear enough please point it out to me. By the way, any request to sticky this post would be appreciated.
-Fluke