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How to print fuse-bead patterns at actual size

A fuse-bead template only helps if the printed circles line up with the pegs on your board. Mandolin Handmade’s Print PDF is built at a fixed physical scale. If the printer shrinks the page to “fit,” the pattern will not match the pegboard even though the file itself is correct.

Why scale matters

Pegs sit on a regular grid. The Designer and the PDF both assume 5.0 mm from one peg center to the next. When that spacing is preserved on paper, you can set the printout on or beside the board and see where each bead goes. When the page is scaled, every row drifts a little, and by the far edge the mismatch is obvious.

“Fit to Page,” “Shrink to Fit,” and similar printer options exist to keep a document from clipping the paper margins. That is useful for letters and slides. It is the wrong setting for a pegboard template. The Mandolin Handmade PDF is already laid out for US Letter. It is not meant to be resized in the print dialog.

What Mandolin Handmade prints

Print PDF from the Designer creates a US Letter document (8.5 × 11 inches). Bead centers are 5.0 mm apart. Each occupied cell is drawn as a 4.5 mm circle on that center. Empty cells are shown as tiny pale gray dots, distinct from full-size white beads with dark outlines. The pattern is never scaled down to squeeze a large design onto one sheet.

A page can hold at most a 29-row by 29-column tile at that scale. 14 × 14, 21 × 21, and 29 × 29 designs print on a single page. Anything wider or taller is split into tiles. Those tiles are arranged left to right, then top to bottom, with no overlap and no extra margin of beads repeated between pages.

That 29 × 29 per-page limit is why a 29 × 58 design uses two pages, a 58 × 58 design uses four, and an 87 × 87 design uses nine. The pegboard size guide lists page counts for every supported size.

Printer settings

After you download the PDF, open it and print from a viewer that lets you control scaling. Set the scale to Actual Size, or 100%. Turn Fit to Page off. If your dialog has a “Custom scale” field, leave it at 100%.

Use US Letter paper. Portrait orientation matches how the PDF is built. Color printing is useful because the legend uses the same palette names you will shop for, but the grid is still a placement map if you print in grayscale—you will rely more on the legend and the on-screen Designer.

The PDF itself prints the instruction PRINT AT ACTUAL SIZE / 100% — FIT TO PAGE: OFF on each page. If a preview looks smaller than the paper with large empty margins, that can be normal: a 14 × 14 grid does not fill Letter paper. Do not use Fit to Page to make those circles larger. Larger circles would no longer match 5.0 mm pegs.

How large patterns split across pages

Tiles are pieces of the same grid, not mini versions of the whole picture. Page 1 is the top-left 29 × 29 (or smaller leftover on the last column or row). The next page continues to the right. When that row of tiles is done, the next row of tiles starts below, still left to right.

Examples from the current tile rules: 29 × 58 prints two pages, both covering rows 1–29; the first page is columns 1–29 and the second is columns 30–58. 58 × 29 also prints two pages, but they stack vertically: rows 1–29, then rows 30–58, each with all 29 columns. 58 × 58 is four pages in reading order. 87 × 87 is nine pages in reading order.

Multi-page sheets are labeled with a page number and a tile coordinate, such as PAGE 2 OF 4 and TILE 1,2, so you can sort them if they come out of the printer out of order. Single-page designs omit that extra line.

Assembling tiled pages

Print all pages. Keep them in the same rotation; do not turn a tile sideways to save wall space. Lay the top row of pages left to right, then the next row under it. The pattern should meet at the cut between tiles with no repeated column and no missing column.

You can build on pegboards as you go, using one printed tile at a time, or tape the pages into a larger map and work from the joined sheet. If you are joining physical pegboards, line them up so the 5.0 mm spacing continues across the seam—the same way the tiles continue across pages.

You do not need a special light box. The printed circles are the placement guide. If a tile looks slightly off compared with the board, confirm the printer did not apply fit-to-page after all before you assume the file is wrong.

Orientation

On the grid, the first row is the top. The first cell in each row is the left. That is the same orientation Import Image uses when it converts a photo, and the same orientation the PDF uses when it draws tiles. Rectangular designs are not mirrored, rotated, or transposed automatically.

If a 29 × 58 printout looks wide and short, that is the design you chose, not a printer bug. Choose the matching template size before you draw or import. See the size guide for portrait versus landscape rectangles, and the photo-to-pattern guide if you are converting an image.

What else is on the PDF

Each page includes the Mandolin Handmade header logo. If you entered a design title in the Designer, that title appears on the pages. A blank title is left off the visible page rather than filling in a placeholder name.

Below the grid is a color legend for the whole design, not only the beads on that tile. Each used color is listed with its official palette name and the number of beads of that color in the complete pattern. A TOTAL BEADS line is the occupied-cell count for the entire design. That is why every page of a tiled printout shows the same legend and the same total: you can grab any sheet and still see how many beads to buy.

Each page also has a QR code that opens the Fuse-Bead Designer, with the heading CREATE YOUR OWN PATTERN and the Designer address next to it. It is a link back to the tool, not a code for a discount.

The current Print PDF does not include a separate calibration ruler line, and it does not include a coupon or promo code. If you need to confirm scale, the reliable check is still Actual Size / 100% with Fit to Page off, plus the 5.0 mm spacing built into the circles.

From screen to pegboard

Finish editing in the Designer first. Bead counts on screen should match what you expect to place. Then export Print PDF, print at actual size, and build. Saved copies can live in Projects on this device if you want to reprint later. Community designs from Community Patterns print the same way once you open them in the Designer—the PDF always reflects the grid you have on screen, including your edits.