have you thought about making a "rough blank" out of cardboard? what I mean is make a very crude first draft of the model, the one to use when manipulating scale.
I make papermodels, a lot of which use reverse-engineered computer models (i.e. make a guy from world of warcraft and make him 2d, print on paper) you might be able to make a suitable model this way.
while your at it, make a chainsword papermodel and relaease it free for everyone to make!