SketchUp printing parameters--full scale possible?

[Evin Moore]

I have a student who is building an electric guitar. He has built a few already, but has always used stock necks. He plans to build the neck as well on his current project.

He needs to lay out the fretboard, a task that requires exact measurements to the 1/1000 of an inch. I am wondering if he can plot it out in SketchUp (perspective "off") and print it out at exact full scale, either tiling it on a home printer, or putting it on disk and taking it to an architectural printer with larger capacity.

He is going to cut the fret slots by hand, and my thought is that he could take the print out and temporarily glue it to the fretboard and saw right through the paper template.

Any other ideas would be welcome.
Thanks.

[Dave Richards]

I'm not certain about GSU but SUPro5 can do it.

[Evin Moore]

I have SketchUp Pro5, but don't know how to do it.

I tried a test where I drew a 1 1/2" square.
In the page set up window of printers properties, I checked "scaled printing" and entered 100%.

When I printed it out, my box printed out at 1 29/32".

[Dave Richards]

Check Use Model Extents and set scale to be one to one. It ought to work fine. You are correct that Perspective must be off.

[Jamie Buxton]

If you really need the template to be accurate to .001", using a standard home printer probably won't do. The paper can slip a tad on the feed rollers, so you don't see that kind of accuracy. Also, paper itself changes size with changes in ambient humidity, which interferes with that kind of accuracy. I've tiled paper patterns by criss-crossing my intended pattern with tracer lines which help me with the tiling. I find that with my printer and my paper, the lines just don't align from sheet to sheet. I need to make some splitting-the-difference adjustments -- maybe as much as .05" -- as I'm taping the tiles together.

That said, I'm pretty sure that the equipment in the usual woodshop can't cut fret kerfs to .001" accuracy. Maybe .01" if you're very careful, but not .001". For .001", you'd probably need to use an NC mill of some sort. And that said, people built darn good guitars long before NC equipment was developed. So maybe the .001" accuracy is an overspec?

[Evin Moore]

Dave-Thanks, I'll give that a try when I get home from work.

Jamie-
from "The Electric Guitar, Its History and Construction" by Donald Brosnac:

"The basic fret formula is to divide the string length by 17.85, take the remaining distance and divide by that, and so forth. The closer the frets move, the more critical the placement."

Here is a sample of a fretting table (Rickenbacker) from the same book:

Scale length = 24 inches
Fret No. Length from Nut
1 1.347
2 2.618
3 3.318
4 4.951
5 6.020
6 7.029
7 8.880
8 9.729

...etc.

Would I be able to discern if it was off by a few thousandths of an inch?
Don't know, but that's how they arrive at it.
But thanks for the thoughts regarding a home printer.

[Jamie Buxton]

I see that luthier supply places (for instance http://www.stewmac.com/) offer templates, jigs, and special saw blades for accurately cutting the kerfs for frets. That would be a good way to assure that your guitar plays in tune.

[Evin Moore]

Thanks. Those fret scale rules look like just the ticket.
I'll pass it along.

[josh bjork]

You can buy a fretboard and make the rest of the neck. You still gotta fret it.