The keepers of our article archive have agreed to bust out an article by Jud Peake on drawing ellipses and put it on the free side of our website. The article is called “The Scribed Ellipse”, and it shows how the author uses a simple trammel rig to draw a quarter of an ellipse. The article also shows how to use the string method to draw an ellipse alluded to by Chris Rogers in his comment. Jud Peake is a legendary carpenter in the Bay Area. He worked on the trim crew that detailed Skywalker Ranch (Trimming out the Main House, fhb# 31). He followed that gig with a job on the crew that rebuilt the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. It’s a vast Victorian greenhouse with curved framing members everywhere. You can view it on Wikipedia. If the title existed, Jud would be a certified Curvologist.

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