- Paul wrote:

What you are asking for is overhead projector tranparencies. These can be
printed on a laser printer.

There are two kinds.

Ask someone who has gummed up the fuser unit in their
laser, with the wrong kind, how many kinds there are :-)

That's what I was worried about!

In the "Grafix Clear-Lay Acetate Alternative 0.005 In.
8 1/2 In. X 11 In. Pack Of 100 (K05CV0811)" item, the word
"laser" doesn't appear anywhere in the description. That's
a hint they will become gummy-bears, inside a laser fuser.

Our stock cabinet at work, at one time, had new boxes of
*both* types. Just to test the reading comprehension of the
staff. And to make an eventual mess and smell at the laser
station.

I like the idea of ensuring that they say 'laster' on them somewhere!
Thanks for the warning.

The pragmatic approach we'll take is the following, since we have strong
winds, rain, and they need to last a long time.

1) We will design with PowerPoint because we don't see (yet) how the
complexity of a vector-graphics program such as Inkscape adds any value
when it can't tile so the tiler is what's rendering the images, and even
then, the X-acto knife is the final vector-graphics renderer.

2) PowerPoint will save to an image which we will tile using Susan's
suggested Posterazor which easily creates a 4-page PDF so that we don't
have to worry about guessing how to print all four corners of the desired
size as we would have to do with Irfanview or LibreOffice tiling
procedures.

3) Those four tiles will be printed to laser-hardened transparencies, and
taped together to make a stencil after cutting out with an X-acto knife and
then spray painting red on white and maybe adding a clear coat of some sort
on the outside. (Vinyl letters would be nice but at 50 cents each letter,
the cost is astronomical compared to spray paint.)

The hardest part likely will be the spray painting to get crisp edges.
3.