Laser cut wooden hand saw plaque

[Skip Weiser]

If you would take a second and look at item number 360095862786 on ebay, it's a laser cut wooden hand saw with a pheasant scene laser cut into the blade area.

I think that's a neat idea and I'd like to make a couple. I already have a good hand saw vector that some kind SMC'r posted here, but I'm missing a vector scene of some kind that I could cut into the blade. Ducks, deer, a farm house scene or something?

My Corel skills fall into the "Just know enough to get by" category, so I was wondering if anyone had a vector scene that would look nice cut into the saw?

Thanks,
Skip

[Jim Good]

You can go to www.scrolleronline.com (http://www.scrolleronline.com) and look at some of their hand saw designs. I'm guessing you'll get a .pdf from them and you'll have to convert it to vector format. The cost is pretty inexpensive for the nice design you get.

Jim

[Skip Weiser]

You can go to www.scrolleronline.com (http://www.scrolleronline.com) and look at some of their hand saw designs. I'm guessing you'll get a .pdf from them and you'll have to convert it to vector format. The cost is pretty inexpensive for the nice design you get.

Jim

Wow, you are right Jim. Lots of ideas, patterns, and reasonable prices.

Thanks,
Skip

[Ross Lowry]

That site did have a bunch of great patterns!
My question is though, what is the easiest and fastest way of turning those images into vector patterns?
In the past I have always used the bezier tool in Corel, but that takes awhile.

[Jim Good]

Ross,

I wish there was an easy way to do the conversion. I use Corel Draw version 12 to trace the bitmap. The first step is to convert to a bitmap and I use black and white (1 bit). Then I trace it using the "centerline" option.

Using X3, there is not a centerline option so the traced line (using line art)actually has an outside and inside line, where the middle is color filled. You can actually remove the color fill and then zoom in and see the 2 lines. If the artwork is simple, you can just delete the inner lines or outer lines depending on the artwork.

The new X4 version of Corel has the centerline option. That was one of the changes from X3.

You can always let William do it at Excalibur! He'll give you a great vector graphic from your artwork.

I hope that helps!

Jim

[Rudy Ress]

Ross,
Some scanners (HP) have the software that automatically scan and convert the bitmaps into B/W vector scalable images directly. Check your outputs types for your scanner software.

[Jim Good]

Rudy,

I need one of those! :D

Jim

[Rudy Ress]

Jim,
I'll check the model tonight after I leave my day job. It is a fairly old scanner (>6 years old), so I would imaging most newer scanner also have that capability.

The other neat way is if you can get a copy of the PDF version of the pattern. You can directly import it into Corel X4 (not sure about earlier versions) as a vector file. You then just have to do some clean-up. But it is much easier than tracing.:D

[Ross Lowry]

Thanks guys that was very helpful!