anywhere that has a large-format plotter and a friendly face will do the trick. walk into an architect’s office…they can help you out. if you don’t know of any architects in the neighborhood, try a small, 1-man print shop. generally, a professional printer costs a lot more than kinko’s…but for something as basic as a curved line, i’m sure they’d do it for cheap assuming the guy isn’t an ass. look around…you’ll find something.
Try and get it printed on a transparent plastic and then use an overhead projector. Scale up to the right size by moving the machine, project onto cardboard, masonite or whatever You like. Draw out the template by freehand and adjust with hand planer if needed.
Try Staples. But you have to find one with a large copier. They are limited to 200% or so enlargements but you just have to enlarge a pic and then make a 200% copy of that to get the size you want. For example If you have a 12 inch template a 200% copy gives you 2 foot. A 200% copy of that gives you a 4 foot template. Another 200% and you have an 8 foot template. If you want an odd size you better do the math before hand because the people behind the counter are going to do it for you. For example to end up with a 7’6" template in the above case your last enlargment will be less than 200%.
I was dropping off cardboard boxes at a recycling center and I saw a 7 foot piece of cardboard in one of the bins, so I fished it out (which is actually against the law here, but I didn’t get caught). Just traced out my template onto it and cut it with a utility knife. It was stroke of luck finding it, I haven’t seen anything that size since.
At Kinkos it really is the way you ask them to do something. My dad had a bunch of blueprints he needed copies of, and when he called them up they told him it would be like $40 to get one copy of every page (there were probably 8 pages). When we stopped by the store, they charged us about $10, copied every page, and even put the images on a CD.
I use the cheap brown wrapping paper or white butcher block paper traced by hand off the board I like. By the way, Jolldizzle if your out there could you pm me concerning your templates. Very sorry. Deleted you information by accident. Mike
look up reprographics in the phone book. I haven’t lived out that way in a few years but there used to be a company called OCB Reprographics in Orange County, you could try them.
Anyway, these reprographics companies make plots of construction plans for engineers and architects and they are a lot cheaper than Kinko’s. You will need to create a plot file to email them. Give them a call and explain what you want to do. Be nice and keep trying (some of these places are extremely busy) and I am sure you will find someone who will help you. Anyway you should be able to have them print it out for you for $5 or less.
I’ve been using the aps3000 and Adobe Illustrator method. It has worked very well for me. The key to having the template turn out right is to make sure that you use rather thick lines for the template and to make sure you use some sort of guide to make sure they are turning out straight. It took me two or three tries to get it correct but now I can do the whole process in a half hour or so.
You were just talking to the wrong person at Kinkos. Here is what I do. APS, print to Adobe, Copy into photshop and resize, save jpeg as PDF and I take it to kinkos. I print the template out on the large format printer that has the rolled paper. It is the same printer you would use to print posters. Ask for black and white. The cost per foot on this printer is well under a dollar on the rolled paper. I think a 9 foot template just cost me a little over 4 bucks. Good luck with Kinkos!
I use an Aps3000/Adobe Illustrator method too. I fool around on aps3000 until I’m firm on the shape and center, 1’ from nose, and 1’ from tail widths. Then I hop on Illustrator, create a document that is the length of my board, and about an inch wider than my widest point (or rather half my widest point, since the template is really just half the width of the finished board). Then I place horizontal rules at 1’ back from nose, 1’ up from tail, and at the widest point. Then I place vertical rules at the widths of my tail, nose, and widest point. From there I play with the Pen tool, which makes beautiful curved lines, making sure the lines go through my previously-plotted points. You can then tweak the curves with the Direct Selection tool until it looks perfect. Using the Document Layout settings, set it up to print All Imageable Areas. This will print sections of your outline on separate pages. I then take those pages and spray glue them one at a time on my masonite or luan template material, lining up all the edges and keeping the centerline flat against the straight edge of my template material. Then I run it through the bandsaw just outside the line, finish up with a hand plane and sanding block. Works great!
for $70 you caould take a CAD file / illustrator file to a machine shop and have it produced in your choilce of materials, and have some $'s left over to buy the guy a sixer of green bottles.
Kinkos charged me like $10 to print out a 6’ fish. I did the full thing, not just half so half would be cheaper I’m sure since they go by the sq ft but I didn’t feel like doing that. I just made a PDF of the file from AutoCAD and took it in on a USB flash drive.
Howzit josh, Just go to a surf shop that sell surf techs and ask for one of the boxes they ship in. At least one good thing could come from Surf tech.Aloha,Kokua