Sunday, April 6, 2008

Ancestor Chart

It is that time. I need to send my ancestor chart off for printing in large format. Since I last printed, in the Fall of 2007, my tree has grown quite a bit: I am now at 382 grandparents going back 10 generations.

I have included a link to the PDF which I've placed on my website server. It is about 1.2MB in size and on a single page prints out to about 98 x 98 inches.

Click here to open PDF ancestor chart.

Right now I don't use a service to which I send off the file and await the arrival of a long cardboard tube. Luckily, I have a friend who is a partner in a graphics firm here in Chicago. He printed my last tree which is mounted on my office wall and always generates a look of fascination from non-genealogy visitors.

The problem right now is the size - my friend can print sizes up to 48 by 144 inches. Since I am limited to less than half the current width of 98 inches on my chart, I will need to create two charts - one for my father's side and another for my mother's. I guess I am blessed to have such problems.

I'd like to find out what other genea-bloggers do when it comes to printing ancestor and/or descendant charts:

- do you send them off to a service to print? If so, how much does it cost? What is the turnaround time? How is the quality of the final product?

- do you print them yourself and then assemble the pages using the cut and paste method?

- do you display the chart and if so, where?

2 comments:

Nikki - Notes of Life said...

I work for a graphics/print company and we do large format printing, so I guess I would print mine at work. Again, I don't think we can print quite that large, so I would do it in 2 pieces. We can print pretty much to whatever length we want (as the paper comes on a roll), it's just the width we're confined to.

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

I have a 9 generation chart but it is hand printed. I would like to have one professionally printed someday.