kmmcrafts

Well darn, I guess that means I need to unload the rest of the truck. I filled up my one storage space and still have more than half of what was in the first picture in my truck. I might put some of this on Marketplace but I have no idea of the value. I'd guess around 150 ish bdf since they estimated the load to be around 200 bdf.. I don't really even know how you calculate the bdf. I'm just a scroll sawer, Should be worth at least a couple hundred I'd think.

How close are you and how much you want? I have way more walnut than I need. I’m only taking this stuff because it was headed to the burn pile or wood chipper. Lots of good crafts wood here.

This should be the last of my walnut lumber. Hopefully I will be able to make room to get it all inside. Last two photos is what I had from last falls haul. I did use a small stack that I couldn’t get up above last year. Todays load has been cut for a year so it should be dry enough to use. I should be set on walnut lumber for a year or so I think. Now if he would just get some rejected cherry. The lumber graders will reject it if it’s not a certain length or if it has a split or knot in it within the certain length.

I cannot agree more with this.. PLUS, new blade styles and brands sometimes get mentioned that are not to most known about. Many folks have never heard of the SuperSharp brand of blade sold by PSWood. They are also a good blade but pricey and last I knew no reverse tooth option.. I like them for cutting thick wood.. but I only bought them to "try" and the Pegas are really good all around blade so I doubt I'd go outta my way ( pay extra money) to buy them again but someone else might. This is how we learn new things sometimes by bringing up topics that have been talked about many times over the years. Not to mention we gain new members all the time that have different methods of doing things that we can possibly learn from or give them some learning experiences.

When I use my Excalibur for the larger blades I typically will push down on the top of the blade chuck to take out slack when clamping the blade.. then I tighten the screw and apply tension and then again release tension and kinda do the same thing over. I find there is slack ( in my saw anyway ) in that upper arm and when applying the tension the first time round it pulls the arm fully down and releasing the tension I can see slack in the blade. When using the real small blades I do not do the re-tension the second time. While the tension set up on these is nice and simple for probably most of the average scrollers.. it's a shame Excalibur did away with the tension lever like on the DW saws.. The early saws had the same style lever. Once you put a lot of hours in on a scroll saw you do get a feel for how much tension you have just by the pressure it takes to push that tension lever, LOL Most times I just swap over to the Hawk where I can adjust the tension.. The only Excalibur style saw now days with a adjustable tension is the Jet saw.. But if you change to Pegas clamps then you lose that option, LOL. The top of the blade chuck on that saw has adjustable height by turning the tension lever will raise or lower the position of the chuck to achieve proper clamping and tension.

It's been around 10 years since I first bought the sample packs of Pegas brand blades. I bought samples of every style and size, the previous 8 or so years I used Flying Dutchman blades. I can tell you that I still to this day have most all those blades still in the sample packages.. I did try each and every blade so I did use at least 1 blade of each style and size. My sample packs have the Pegas MGT sizes 3,5,7 empty of blades so apparently I like these sizes, LOL. IF I had to choose one blade for all my projects I do I'd have to say #3 MGT.. second most used is the #5.. Not only does each person have a different preference but also every saw has a different set up. For a long time I used only Pegas blades on my Hawk and continued to use FD blades on my DeWalt / Excalibur. The DW you cannot adjust the saw for a more or less blade forward / back movement ( blade aggression ) and so the Pegas ( at first use ) was too aggressive for me on the DW saw.. I finally did get used to them.. but they are sharp and they cut much faster and took a bit more practice of controlling the cut. Now I use mostly only Pegas. I might use a #3 blade on the Excalibur where I normally would use a #5 on the Hawk cutting the same project. This is why I rarely will suggest a blade to anyone new or seasoned scroll sawer, because not every saw cuts the same. How the saw is tuned and set up makes a huge difference in cutting efficiency and blade life. Blade ( saw speed ) is another factor. in some cases a person can slow down or speed up a saw to make their comfort level with a certain blade. IF you find yourself pushing the wood harder than you should maybe you need to speed up the saw or choose a different blade. IF you find the cutting going too fast for you you can either slow the saw speed some or change a blade. Me personally, I run my saw on high speed for most all my cutting and adjust my sawing ability by swapping blades to get what I'm most comfortable with for sawing said project. I might have learned this technique from my first saw I had because it was a 2 speed saw and low speed was way too slow for me and high speed was kinda fast for me being a newbie at sawing so I learned to leave saw speed alone and look at various blades to find my comfort level.

Thanks for all the nice comments..

Over the past year or so I've picked up quite a few people on here that buy the clock inserts from me. Wasn't sure I should post this in the general section but I felt this would get seen by most here. Over the past 3-4 weeks I've been working / playing on a new website and if you have bookmarked my site in the past it'll no longer take you to the site, it'll likely take you to the new site which isn't launched yet. The new site hasn't went live yet but I was at the point of pointing my domain address to the new site so now the address for the old site has changed. For the time being I have added a " Clock Inserts" link in my signature so to get to the clocks quickly you should be able to find any posting I make or have made and in the signature area click the text "clock inserts" and it'll take you to the page where my inserts are. The KevsKrafts.com in my signature will take you to the new site.. but you'll likely get a page that says "opening soon" with a area to enter your email for notification of when the store launches. At this point I'm not certain a new site will ever be launched, I'm just testing other options than the site hosting I have been using.. each hosting place has good and bad points so who knows.. I may just put the old site back up with the domain going there again, LOL Anyway to get to the clocks just find the link in my signature until I get done playing around with new sites, actually kinda handy to just have a direct link to the inserts in my signature anyway.

Well I guess I’m about done messing with this guy. Struggled with how I wanted to do the arms and I finally settled on something simple. Overall it worked out pretty good. Sprayed a couple coats of Lacquer on it today. May do a light sanding and shoot another coat on it in a couple days. Was a fun and sometimes monstrous project that I had to put down and work on something else before I got mad and throw it. I will never make another one as It’s not my style of wood art to make. Almost declined making it in the first place and probably should have. But it is for a special occasion and person. Edit: Yes the clock lens is cracked, it's a old clock that I keep out in the shop to test fit when making projects.. I'll throw in a new clock before giving it to her. LOL.. My wife keeps on reminding me I can't use that clock in it because it's broke, LOL.. I keep messing with her saying it's not broke the clock works fine.. just has a crack in it,

Yeah thanks from me too. I've never seen this website.. now I have more clock patterns to add to my to-do-list.. LOL

I posted this idea and it's progress in the Laser / CNC group here on the village but since there is only 15 members and also since I did use the scroll saw I figured it was okay to post here too.. This project started with rough cut walnut lumber and cutting / planing / jointing it down to do a glue up of a final size of 24W x 15H x 3/4.. Once glued and sanded I put 2-3 coats of Shellac and then sanded it down to 400 grit. I then covered the entire face with Oramask ( similar to shelf liner but way better ) I then used the CNC Router to carve out the text. After the carve I sealed the carved out portion with 3 coats of Lacquer and then hand painted the text with white acrylic paint and then peel off the oramask. Next I scroll saw the grill / utensils from 1/8" Maple and glued that onto the sign with weldbond glue. Next I laser engrave the Red Stag bottle on the laser from 1/8 BBply and straight off the laser top coated the engrave before anything smudges. Then I cut the bottle shape out on the scroll saw and also glue it to the sign. Once all was in place and dry I top coat with 3 coats of Lacquer.. I like these projects where I can incorporate each tool.. I hope to be doing many more projects like this. If you go the the "groups" section and find the CNC/Laser groups and join you can see the progress of this from the original carve design model through to the finished project.

As Ray said, same saw different paint / stickers etc..

It's kind of funny how this works with my brother because he has always said if I need something special to go see him.. I typically buy my lumber that is from a lumber store that has been dried and planed.. But 4 or so years ago I desperately needed a small piece of Walnut.. and the lumber store I typically go to was closed that day and they always had very thick big pieces and smaller stuff was hard to find.. My brother took that as a "anytime he has some rejected Walnut I'll take it because I'm always looking for it, LOL.. I don't use it very often and mostly use cherry or poplar.. I've told him that I was about out of Cherry today.. so that'll probably be the next one he will load my shop up with.. Again what he gives me today I have to wait at least a year to use and I have to stack it up in my loft stickered so it can air dry.

Have also considered that.. most the issue with selling wood is sealing it up so the changes in temps / humidity don't warp / cup / twist the lumber.. Also getting it directly from the mill is a issue of having to store it for 1-2 years for it to dry out good enough to use.

Have thought about that and also have offered a few members free lumber if they paid shipping cost but everyone I've done that for declined when they seen the cost of shipping just a few pieces.. especially now that they changed the rates to calculate the box size and weight.. was much cheaper before they started the box sizing thing.

For those that don’t know my brother owns a lumber mill. They had the lumber grade people there sorting lumber and this lumber didn’t meet the requirements so either I was to come get it or it was going into the wood burner. I still haven’t used the full two truck loads of walnut he gave me last fall. And while there he reminded me I am supposed to go to another mill that has 200bdf of 4ft pieces that he gave me last month that they needed to move out of the storage area so I guess I should have plenty of walnut lumber for a couple years probably, While there he tried to get me to take a stack of spalted maple he has. He gave me 100 or so bdf about 10 years ago that I still haven’t used that I told him I was thinking about selling, burning or something because it doesn’t fit with my typical projects I make.

Not sure if this will help, I was just measuring some stuff and had my calipers handy. I wasn’t sure if you were using mm or inch so I did both. Hope this is useful

Someone on here made some of the swivel ends for their Hawk saw and they said they worked good. I'm not really sure it's needed as I've not really ever had a issue with them on any of my Hawks.

What kind of blade you talking about? I get that sometimes with spiral blades. Also bought some new thumb screws from the local hardware and they was not flat on the end and that did it too. It’s quite hard to dress the ends flat without going on an angle unless you use some sort of jig. Since the Hawks don’t have the spinning end insert like some of the other saws I found it to be way more picky about how flat and smooth the ends are. I’ve always wanted to build a jig out of metal but the wooden one does a good enough job. Take a scrap piece of plywood at least 1/4 inch thick and drill you a hole just the right size so the thumb and set screws will hold tightly when threading them in and screw them in just enough to protrude slighting on the back side. Now make sure they are threaded into the wood straight. Then you can sand them completely flat and reinstall the set screw with a little blue loc-tite and adjust it so the blade is in the center of the slot in the blade clamps. Doing this usually will solve any blade slipping and bending.

Where I live, during rush hour I might see 2-3 cars within a 10 mile drive .. This morning I had to go about 100 mile trip for a appointment. I left at 5am and only seen 1 car on my way to the expressway which is about 15 miles to the expressway.

I wonder if the Excalibur saw footprint would mount on a Hawk stand.. I might have to do some measuring because those EX stands are wide.. Could always make a homemade wood stand.. Excaliburs don't do a whole lot of vibrating and would do fairly well on most any stand so long as it's bolted or clamped down.

Here is a picture of the one key rack I was making for my son. This is the only photo I have of it and was before it had any topcoat etc on it. Just resin filled and sanded. I think I got the idea from a post Steve Good did.. On this project I used 1/8 Oak and then glued to a 1/2 - 3/4 backer.. then filled the resin enough to build it up higher than the main surface then sanded it down flush with the rest of the wood. EDIT To Add: This is where I got my inlace from but they no longer seem to sell it on the site, however they do list several distributors where you can purchase it. I was surprised to see Grizzly sells it.. I think of Grizzly for tools.. I'm not sure how small of amounts you can get of what is known as Epoxy but it doesn't take much and this stuff might be a better / cheaper option? Only downfall might be is this stuff is / was purchased already colored so if you need several color options maybe the actual epoxy is a better option.

Well I kind fibbed a little, I didn't realize it was a type of epoxy that I used back around 2008 when I made some key racks and keychains and I filled the cutout area with stuff that was called "Inlace" I think was the name of it. In the autobody world the stuff reminded me of colored fiberglass resin.. it was a colored resin and you mix in the activator / hardener mix it up good and fill the cutout area.. The stuff smelled like fiberglass resin too, some time ago the subject came up and I mentioned this stuff and someone told me it was actually epoxy.. I've never worked with the stuff that is actually called epoxy so I don't know.. seemed my fiberglass resin to me but they may be related. I'll try to find some old pictures of a couple of the projects I made with it.

I also have never used it but have toyed with the idea of using it for the last couple years. So I look forward to seeing some more on this topic.

Good eye Ray, I haven't been inside one of these DeWalts since around 2010 - 11 ish.. and had no clue what I was looking at or for.. LOL