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Nail position templates.
Every dot numbered, printed at true scale, tiled across as many sheets as it takes. Pick a shape, a size and a nail count — the PDF is built in your browser the moment you press the button.
- Board
- 53 cm
- Nails
- 240
- Gap
- 7.0 mm
- Pages
- 10
The preview shows how the guide is tiled across 9 sheets of A4, plus a cover page with the assembly map and a 10 cm ruler bar. Only the first 180 nails are drawn here; the PDF has all 240.
Free, no email, no watermark. Built in your browser, so nothing about your project is sent anywhere. Print at 100% — check the ruler bar on the cover before you cut.
From paper to plywood
Four steps, one evening.
- 01
Print at 100%
Actual size, never "fit to page". Measure the 10 cm bar on the cover with a ruler. If it is short, your printer scaled it and every nail will be in the wrong place.
- 02
Cut and butt the tiles
Trim along the dashed border and join the sheets edge to edge — no overlap. Tape them from the back so the front stays flat.
- 03
Nail through the dots
Centre the sheet on a painted board, tape it down, and drive a nail through every dot to the same depth. A strip of tape on the hammer shaft makes a good depth gauge.
- 04
Tear the paper away
Make radial cuts between nails and pull the paper out in wedges. What is left is a clean ring of nails, numbered clockwise from the top.
The full board-building guide has the wood, paint and nail specifics →
Choosing a size
Bigger boards hold more detail.
Detail is limited by the gap between nails, not by the nail count on its own. Below about 4.5 mm of spacing you cannot get thread around a nail cleanly, which is why the small sizes are labelled for pen drawings. Around 7 to 11 mm is comfortable — Petros Vrellis, who started all of this, used 200 pegs on a 71 cm rim, about 11 mm apart.
| Board | Metric | A4 pages | Gap at 240 nails | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7″ | 18 cm | 1 | 2.4 mm | Pen and ruler drawings |
| 14″ | 36 cm | 4 | 4.7 mm | Pen drawings, small experiments |
| 21″ | 53 cm | 9 | 6.9 mm | The sweet spot for thread |
| 28″ | 71 cm | 16 | 9.3 mm | Gallery scale, the original Vrellis size |
Questions
About the templates.
What is a nail template?
A printed sheet showing exactly where every nail goes, with each position numbered. You tape it to the board, drive a nail through each dot, then tear the paper away. It is the only way to get 240 nails evenly spaced without measuring each one.
How do I print it at the right size?
Choose "Actual size" or 100% in the print dialog and turn off "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages". The cover page carries a 10 cm bar and a 4 inch bar — measure one with a ruler before you cut anything.
How are the pages joined?
Cut along the dashed border of each tile and butt them edge to edge, no overlap. The cover page shows a numbered map of which tile goes where, and every tile repeats that map with its own position highlighted.
Which way do the numbers run?
Nail 1 is at the top centre and the numbers run clockwise. Every tenth nail gets a larger dot and a bold label. This matches the sequence the studio speaks aloud.