Picots gauge 3 in 1, simple math

I do not really like the picots but for certain pieces I must admit, they are a must! I admire all the tatters working respectig all the rules of the tatting art and technique. And I always wondered: how do they manage to make so beautiful and even picots. The answers vary from picot gauge, bought or self made, ice cream stiks and the winner: "eye gauge".

Not for me. I would not have the patience to use 3-4 different picots gauges. But the idea came in my head, because I needed recently to make a very large picot, and to repeat it several times. 

Si I gave it a thought... Simple math question actually. All the picots gauges I saw were fractions of 1 inch... So why not just 1 instead of 3 or 4? Tatting is, after all, manipulating thread with our shuttles how we want to get what we want. (Do I feel the smile? The thought about the miss-tattings crosses my mind right now). 

Math is simple: the picot we do has the half of the thread we use to make it, right?

So I started. I made an example of a picot gauge for only 3 sizes of picots, starting the 1cm wide one. 

Tat and make the first picot normally, using the gauge in the normal way. You take 10mm thread, you get a 5mm picot. Nothing spectacular. 

For the second picot I marked the middle of my "gauge". I place the last ds at the mark and make the picot. I have now used 15 mm and I got a 7,5mm (more or less) picot. 

 

For the longest picot, I place the last ds in a way that I wrap the gauge with thread when I make the picot. 

 

For this demonstration I stopped here, with 1 cm, 7,5 mm and 5mm picot.  

You can with a bit of imagination mark your own points on the gauge, so you can have control of what you want to have. Do not forget that the back side of the gauge will have the full lenght of thread. 

Hope this helped. I know I will play a bit longer with this thing.