Beginner Question on Templates

[JKSLIDER]

Hi all,

My wife bought me a sign making kit for Christmas and I have had a lot of fun making signs using the pre-made letters included in the kit.

She also found a DVD that Jim Bartz narrated on the subject of relief carving and engraving.

He mentioned in his DVD that you could use pretty much any computer software to create templates to transfer to a piece of wood, but I have not figured out how to do this with MS Word or even MS Paint.

My problem is that would like to create a template say 36 inches long and 18 inches in width, but I can't adjust these two programs to give me that big of a layout or I don't know how?

So my question is, does anyone know how to adjust the page sizes in these programs to do what I am attempting to do or is there a cheap software program out there that anyone knows of that will allow me to do this.

Thanks in advance, Shawn

[FrozenNorth]

Word appears to have a limit of 22 x 22 inches, although it may be printer dependent.

Writer, part of OpenOffice 3.0

doesn't appear to have the same constraints, I just tried 48 x 96 inches, and it gladly took that size, no idea how well it will print out, but the program is free.

[SonomaProducts.com]

Word gets it page sizes from the current printer. Get something like the free PDF Creator print drive (it makes free PDF's). Then you will have more sizes and also a Postscript custom page size capability and you can create any size yu want. Print to PODF then go to Kinkos and print it big. Or try printing the pdf to your normal size printer and see if the driver is smart enough or has the option to tile into multiple sheets.

[John Picton]

I used to use a piece of software called "tile print" to resize any image file to any size. The nice thing is that you can be extremly accurate about your final output file size. There is a demo version that you can get from

and a fully licenced copy is only $15. But to be honest if you are only going to use it for templates then you would probably get away with permanantly using the trial as the only restriction is that it prints a banner on the final image.

It is a couple of years since I used it but I found it very good.

Only thing is you would need to create your template in an art package (even windows paint - which comes with windows would do) and then use that image to create your full sized image.

[JKSLIDER]

Thank you to everyone who replied to this post, I really appreciate the help.

[Robatoy]

Old slide projectors are a dime-a-dozen and available all over the place. Print onto a piece of transparency. I think your layout should be targeted at 2 x 2" then cut to size. Then you can project onto anything you like and trace. An old overhead is pretty cool too, but a bit harder to come by.

[Mike]

Try using MS PowerPoint - you should be able to create a large page size.

[Martin H. Eastburn]

Some printers can print in banner mode. Years ago dot matrix was king in this - now bubble and laser.

Look at the printer booklet or print queue software.

Mart> >