There is no "easy way" to do a decent job. I have tried the assorted methods in FontLab and Fontographer and find it is faster and better to just draw it in the new weight than to try to clean up the mess the "easy way" makes.

Thanks Chris,

This makes sense. Especially when you do not have to design the whole alphabet all over again. I also tried some tricks in Illustrator, but it did not look right.

and find it is faster and better to just draw it in the new weight


Chris. What do you mean by this? Thanks

I think he means to do it by hand/eye, rather than by automated computer process.

The automated process ends up creating problems you need to fix anyway, so you might as well do it on your own.

Andre,
Chris Rugen is right. I meant to draw it in the same way that he drew the heavier weight using it as a visual guide. He seems to have used Illustrator as a tool. My only suggestion would be to put the original weight on a different layer and lock it so you can see it underneath. Sometimes you turn the tracing layer off when it distracts you.

a trick you could try... if you have illustrator
create outline, select your letter and go to the menu select, path, offset path... in the offset enter a positive value for bold and a negative value for light. I think that could have good result and save a lot of time...

Sorry about my english

Come again, Patrick. This board software has to go.

This old typophile thread has lots of good information about developing additional weights:

http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/4101/19011.html

It includes a brief tutorial I wrote on using the FontLab interpolate outline editing tool for this purpose.

John,
Thank you for that link!

Thanks everyone. Very useful information.