Scaling Advice?
Hey everyone
I've been working on my Kat pepakura armor project for awhile now (sadly had to take a pretty long break) and was just looking for some advice on my measurements before printing.. I've finished two boot toes and the handplates now, so I'm fairly comfortable with the pepping process and would really like to jump into a piece a bit more intensive.. so I found L3X BLU3R1V3R's female reach torso here:
http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/28565-Another-Reach-Mark-V-Torso. I've read many comments about it and it seems to be the best Reach torso out there
I've scaled it to what I thought was accurate, but because its 44 pages of cardstock I couldn't in good conscience print it all out without being 99% sure that it would end up fitting correctly after pepping, fiberglassing, and the whole shebang.
I used a formula (by Ral Partha) provided on the page with the chest piece to find my current scale: Assembled Height (in mm) = 10.4 x (shoulder width in cm). My shoulder width in cm is 49.5 x 10.4 = 514.8mm
SO. Here's the scaling its set at right now, height: 515mm; width: 457mm; depth: 517mm
My height is 5'10" and my measurements are (estimating beginning and ending of measurements from legendary statue and the pep file itself), shoulder width: 495mm; width across ribs: 406mm; chestplate (top-bottom of ribcage): 267mm; base of neck to mid-back: 317mm... yeah I'm probably being way too particular about this but I'd really rather not waste all that paper and time spent cutting out and gluing
so I thought it'd be better to provide more info than needed than not enough.
As you can see the width of my shoulders and the width provided in the pep file are not matching up. So, am I measuring in a wrong place compared to the file? Do I scrap the formula (which was said to be accurate by others who used it) and just go by width - width? Do I just take what I have now and go with it? ..or am I just doing everything wrong? lol
I also don't quite know how much more I should add to the measurements to compensate for shrinking during the fiberglass/resin process... any advice there?
I realize this is one of the most common requests/questions out there and I'm sorry for adding another one to the masses, but it seems like every case is different and because it's basically the biggest piece in the build I really want to be sure... (or as sure as one can be about these things..)
Thanks for your patience,
Angela
*edit: that formula is for the male version of this torso also made by L3X BLU3R1V3R. Maybe that's part of the discrepancies? The female torso is edited to be a bit smaller/thinner.*