Also, great work on your Merr Sonn parts too, and thank you for sharing everything! I too (Pat can attest as well, haha) with my very first CAD model, before the project, was done the same way. By measuring from a screen, in this case my home computer screen. But then I realized how to insert and scale the photos we had at the time into my CAD software, and it made a huge difference.
The first model I ever made when I started out in modeling (never posted, but Pat saw pictures of it when we first met), was of the grill. It looked barely okay, but when the project really started publicly, Pat noticed the offset top portion of the Hero's 3 piece grill. Initially I couldn't figure out why mine and all the others weren't setting close enough to the mag-well of the Mauser as the real prop's did.. It was a huge revelation for me personally when Pat pointed out the offset top, that changed the geometry completely and everything finally made sense, came together and fell right in place.
The only thing I would suggest is, always measure your photos from the largest 'known/found' part, in this case the Mauser. If you measure from the very front of the mag-well to the back of the frame, you'll get much closer measurements when working from photos and all of the smaller parts on it. Measuring from a short/much smaller area like the mag-well base plate, it can cause an illusion of accuracy. Always measure from the largest known part is what I learned. If I measured from the MG81 FH then everything would have been waay off on my models back when, rather than within fractions of a .mm as they turned out.
The first Mega-Run grills were actually modeled from a much, much lower quality Merr Sonn photo we had at the time, and the primary basing was the length of the Mauser's lower frame for scaling to get the closest dimensions I could get of the Veron cylinder-halves, which hadn't been found yet.
Best of luck buddy, and keep up the good work!
-Carson
