To Kinko's today, to output my transom patterns and then scale them up on the Oce oversize copier. Brought them home for tracing onto pattern paper, to find that one end of my Oce print sort of droops. The horizontal lines on the Oce print match up to the grid on the paper pattern just fine... until the last two or three inches when suddenly everything slopes down, ending up probably 3/16" off-kilter.

My instructor was saying weeks ago that he generally takes his patterns to a place that does blueprint copies for duplication, in case a "regular" photocopy should be off. "Gosh, that sounds like overkill," thought I. Another lesson learned.

Having to compensate for the rogue slope makes it even more nervewracking than necessary to try to do two identical but separate traces of the same pattern. Also nervewracking is the need for maniacal lead-line precision with this piece; there's places where lead will abut lead, or lead will abut the zinc frame, which means more or less zero room for error in cutting the glass around those places. I wonder if there's a manufacturer of precision-tip permanent markers out there? Being able to draw in strokes the exact widths of 3/16" and 1/8" lead would make the fine-tuning much easier, if scarily encouraging of one's anal-retentive tendencies.

And speaking of drawing in precision-width strokes, they are The Number One Reason Why Photoshop Is Clearly Inferior To Illustrator For Purposes Of Stained-Glass Patterns. I decided last night I wanted to change my Photoshop pattern file to reflect true widths of all my lead lines... bwahahah! For the keenly observant---if this looks like a pre-supplied excuse for failure ("It's Photoshop's fault, man!") if construction goes badly, that's because it is.



Posted by Michelle on November 14, 2002 11:00 PM