Chuck Miller has a post in his video blog, “There’s a Better Wayâ€, on drawing ellipses.
Since drawing arches is a often talked about subject here, I’ll pulled out an article from behind the pay wall that describes the process well.
You can find both the video and a link to the article in Chuck’s entry: Drawing an Ellipse-ish
john ross — Web Producer
Edited 5/15/2009 10:32 pm ET by jross
Replies
the 1st link is 404
but the 2nd is way cool! thanks!
Link is fixedjross -- FH Editorial
you sure that that is an ellipse?
It is an elliptical segment. But it is not half of an ellipse.Like someone else said, the two nails and a string were my preferred method. Now, that I have access to AutoCad and a roll plotter, I just draw them in AutoCad, and plot out a template.
Edited 5/15/2009 8:01 pm ET by Jigs-n-fixtures
As a draftsman I learned a couple ways to lay out ellipses. The TRAMMEL method, and the STRING method.
My favorite for carpentry is the STRING method, which is great for larger ellipses, creates a continuous line, and all you need is a couple nails, stringline, and a pencil.
Scroll down:http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/MATHALGO/Ellipses.HTM
Here is another method from 1911
http://books.google.com/books?id=plY1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA167&dq=William+a+radford+old+house+drawings#PPA186,M1
Way back when, someone wrote an article (in FWW?) using a jig like that, with a router attached.And I know that a similar jig was found in the Dominy family workshops when their stuff was cataloged for posterity.In the FWW article, IIRC, they used a dowel or something traveling in the groove, so a helper had to hold a block in the adjacent cross-groove to keep the dowel from straying off course.The tweaked way to do it would be with dovetailed grooves and dovetailed blocks with their ends eased/pointed to smoothly traverse the gaps.AitchKay
I usually use my straight edge on its end and the same three nails. Seems to work just as well.
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