What's The Story?

I'm a cabinetmaker by trade. One of the most useful tools around my shop is a piece of scrap wood. The tool is called a Story Stick. It's a free, flexible, disposable and highly accurate tool for transferring measurements. I recently used the one in the photo to layout size of drawer fronts to be added to a set of desk drawers.

A simple card stock version can be put to similar use when transferring from a drawing and especially great if you're making multiple carvings of the same figure. (I always hang on to a couple used file folders for this purpose.) Card stock holds up pretty well for making transfer patterns. More on that in a future post.

The great thing about this method is the card stock is flexible, so even after you've roughed out your carving, the story stick (card) will conform to your carving. Or you can use your trusty dividers to transfer measurements from and existing model and make your story card.
With my Ski Bum Santa project, I have several going at once and I didn't want to mess with free-handing the goggles each time. Enter card stock pattern