Reducing a Pattern

In my first post, How It All Started, I mentioned that the justification for getting a scroll saw was to make some small words/letters for my wife.  Now that I have my saw I had to figure out how to make smaller letters.

I used a process I learned way back in Junior High art class.  I got a large piece of poster board and traced around each letter.  Then I marked off the poster board in 1 inch squares.

Then I used graph paper that was marked out at 5 squares per inch.  I decided to reduce it to 60% of original so I used a 3x3 square on the graph paper to equal 1 square on the poster board.  I then just went square by square and drew on the graph paper square what was on the poster board square.  I used a different piece of paper for each letter so I can photocopy each page and make the letter.  The letter J is pretty big, 21 inches tall in the original, so it ended up fitting on legal size paper instead of letter size.

And this is what I ended up with!  If you are wondering about the edges, I just used a rotary tool with a sanding drum to hit the edges and make the little indentations.  I still have to figure out how I am going to paint this.  But now my wife is happy and I can make her as many of these as she wants.  Also, like I mentioned before this was made with 1 inch pine.  (Which is really 3/4 inch!)