On Fri, 18 Apr 2014 20:00:16 -0700, SteveB wrote:

I need to make a gasket. It will be about 2 x 3 inches. Pretty simple
stuff. I made one before for my welder carburetor. IIRC, I laid a
piece of paper on it, and rubbed it with dirty fingers until I got a
pattern, then carefully cut it out. It lasted a long time, and would
have lasted longer, but I left it full of gas, and it varnished.

I have cleaned the carb really well, and blown out all the channels and
chased them with pipe cleaners.

I figure to use the piece of white paper again. There are only four
bolt holes, and they have a lot of room for error. I figure this time,
I'll use an X-Acto knife to cut out a lot of the bigger pieces, and a
improvised punch to get the bolt holes.

Any tricks to gasket making? I have enough material to make about four
in case I mess up. Just go slow and easy, I guess. I was going to use
a tiny ball peen to cut off at the outside edges, but decided to leave
about 1/8+" sticking out so I don't have to worry about having too close
tolerances, and having a potential leaking spot. I can just cut outside
the line with scissors, and get it pretty close.

I thought of taking a digital picture, and enlarging it to exact
duplicate scale, and then using that for a template to cut the gasket on
a flat piece of plywood. Might take a little time, but I think I can do
it easily, just include a tape in the pic, and keep adjusting and
printing until it prints dead on.

What would you do?

Steve
I'd see how cheaply I could buy the correct gasket first.
If I was making a simple carb base gasket I'd measure the hole sizes
and centers and lay it out on proper gasket material, then punch out
the holes and then mark and cut out the outline. If I didn't have
access to the gasket punches I would cut the large hole with an xacto
knife