chippygeoff

The way I get round this is to drill 3 or 4 tiny holes with a very small drill bit all very close together so I form a slot and then the blade can be pushed through, its a bit of messing about but on a nice piece of fretwork I cant see the start and finish points.

There are a number of materials you can use. I have found formica to be good and also thin plywood. The good thing about making your own inserts is that you can have a very small hole for fine fret work etc. If you are going to use metal plate for an insert be sure to put a wooden sub table on your saw first.

I have used a lot of MDF in the past, I hate it now and rarely use it. I used to mix PVA glue with some water, about 70% glue to 30% water. I just sealed the edges with this, when dry a light sand with 320 and then a second coat. I then used to give two coats of acrylic paint leaving overnight between coats and then a coat of acrylic varnish and that was a good finish. When working with MDf it is very important to have good dust extraction and wear a mask, a proper one that is.

Well done Kevin. Very nice work and very well made. They remind of my dire need a few weeks ago when my 788 died and I was desperate for a new scroll saw and then the money turned up that allowed me to buy a new Hegner. God knows our needs (not wants) and provides.

I to use various oils for finishing items and like you I use a tub to dip the smaller items. With the bigger items I use brushes about 1/4 -1/2 inch to get to the inside cuts and then use a rag to oil the rest. I will give you a good tip here. Ten minutes after oiling go over it with a rag and wipe off any excess, if you don't you will get high spots that stick out like a sore thumb when viewed in a certain light. Like Travis I also use and acrylic spray on lacquer depending on what i have made and with other items I use a wax polish after the oil has had 24 hours to dry. Another tip, when I oil my items I lay newspaper down on the table and then thin sticks the place the items on so the air can get underneath. When wiping off the excess oil pay attention to where the sticks were. Hope this helps.

Hi Pops. I just had a friend stay with me for a week, all she had ever cut previously was 18mm MDF and she was really bored with it. It was not the cutting of it that got her down but the finishing, two coats of primer and then two top coats of acrylic paint, so time consuming, especially on plaques with names cut out. I got her to cut a few things in birch ply wood and one coat of acrylic brush on paint gave a great finish, two coats were even better. i then got her to cut a few things in hardwood and you should have seen her face when I put an oil finish on it and the grain pattern seemed to jump out. Now she is hooked on making things in birch ply and hardwood and never wants to see another piece of MDF as long as she lives.

Well done Kevin. I have had many answers to prayer and very often the answer comes from where you least expect it. My old 788 is coming to the end of its life now so I am praying the good Lord will bless me with a Hegner.

Hi. I am in the UK as well and most of us buy the flying Dutchman blades from Mikes workshop. I don't know what your cutting but in my opinion the best blades are the ultra reverse. They leave a smooth side to the cut and very little fuzziness on the bottom. Just type in "Mikes workshop" into the search engine and his site will come up.

Hi Jim. When I had my excalibur i had the same problem and initially used plumbers tape with some success but the best solution in the end was locktite. Pleased you have found your own solution.

Lovely work DW. I am in the Uk and I am always looking for nice fonts where i can make words in one piece. I downloaded the cream puff font and will be making the love sign you made. Your names look really stunning.

I have a MK1 788/I have had it for about 15 years now and bought it here in the UK. They are no longer sold here. Soon after I bought it I had an electrical problem and it went back to the supplier twice. It was just a simple thing. I had to use a surge protector, the same thing people use with their computers. I never had a problem since and now all my scroll saws and other light stuff are plugged into surge protectors.

I was going mad with boredom with nothing to do. I was so used to working long days as a carpenter but a disability prevented me from working so i took to the scroll saw, best thing i ever did, just love it. As I say to the people at the craft fairs. I have to sell the stuff so i can make some more. There are several reasons why I do it. One is obviously to keep me occupied. I love the creative side of it, getting a piece or plain wood and turning into something really nice and useful. I love the challenge as well on the more difficult things. It keeps me going every day. I get up in the morning and really look forward to getting on the saw and very often i am still there late into the evening.

Thanks Jim. Getting planed hardwood in the Uk has always been a problem. I don't have the room for a planer but I hope to have a thicknesser soon. Getting hardwood is easy here but getting it planed to various thicknesses is a major headache so a lot of things I make I use MDF and birch ply.

Hi 1Doc. Like you I am in the Uk as well. I am working long days building up my stocks in readiness for the craft fairs. I have got the first one at the end of the month. I just bought some coaster patterns from Sue Mey and they are brilliant and I am working on those for the next few days. I have also been building a large stock of jig saw puzzles for children. I have made a nice display stand for the puzzles and will be making another one before the end of the month to display other things, this one will be a double, like a pasting table but a lot smaller. I have a good stock of portraits so I am almost ready.

Hi Jason. It would be very difficult to make a living with just you making items on a scroll saw. I am disabled and spend most of my time in my workshop and I am not dependant on the income from scroll saw work. I only started craft fairs last year and I treated that as a learning curve. This year things will be a lot different. The craft fairs I attend don't startup again till April so I have plenty of time to build up my stocks of everything. I will be attending a craft fair every Saturday and then spend the rest of the week making items I have sold the previous week. Having the right items in your booth helps so it will pay to visit a few craft fairs and make a mental note of what is selling. You need to make items that are viable, its no good spending two or three hours on an item and then sell it for $10. I make children's names among other things and these sell well and I make a good profit. Last year I made a lot of money as there is no one else doing what I do in my area but the money went back into the business. It is not just a scroll saw you need. To speed up the process and to make things as cheaply as possible you need a whole range of equipment such as planer, bandsaw, belt sander, air cleaner, shop vac, bench drill and many other items. Then you need a whole pile of wood and another pile of finishing items. I am in the UK and so far have spent £6000 but I will easily get that back this year and a lot more besides. You also have to take into account travelling cost to craft fairs, the cost of the booth and your overheads in producing the items you make. You may need public liability insurance as well. Hope this helps. Geoff.

Thanks Travis for your advice. Sometime ago I did buy a geometry set with a couple of protractors and various size squares etc. I had not thought of seeing if the blade has side to side movement and I will check this out first thing in the morning. I get a good note when the blade is tight and I often check the first cut on the wood. Yes, I can understand how easy it is to move the wood while cutting and very often when I release the pressure it has sprung back, as you say, we don't realise we are doing it. I find the successful formula for jigsaws is a tight blade, quite a high speed and having a new blade for the internal cuts. For the last couple of days I have been using an ultra reverse 7 blade on thick ash that is hard, I cover the pattern with 2inch wide clear packaging tape and this works very well and I am happy with the speed of the cut. Part of the problem is the worn blade clamps but the new ones should arrive any day now and then I will see how well the saw performs but in my heart I feel I will put the excalibur in the store cupboard as a spare. I have seen a saw made, or rather imported by a German firm called Sheppach that cost a third of the price of the excalibur, it has good write ups. I find the table on the excalibur is not as substantial as it should be and not enough table in front of the blade to support larger work. The Dewalt mark 1 I have is faultless, it is perfect in every way and has never let me down, it still has the original blade clamps and is a joy to work with. Thanks again Travis. Much appreciated.

Thanks Jim. I do the same, a new blade for each puzzle. Most of the puzzles are only ten to twelve pieces. I cut the outside of the puzzle with the previous blade and when I am ready to cut the pieces i change the blade for a new one.

Thanks for the tip Jim on locktite. I will do that. Wolfmoon. I have a few ways I square the blade to the table. I make a cut into a piece of thick wood and then I turn it over and make another one close to the first and then I see if there is any difference between the gap top and bottom. I also have a 3inch wide steel rule and I mark a line on this with a square, this is the more accurate way as the rule goes all the way across the table and over the edges. I feel I have got the T bolt just right for if I tighten it any less the blade comes out. What I cannot understand is why some pieces of the jig saws I make fail to slide out properly both ways. Yesterday I got the blades square on the dewalt and the excalibur. I then got some scrap hardwood 3/4 thick and cut two jigsaw pieces on each saw and they were perfect. I then cut out a ten piece rabbit, again in 3/4 Ash. Two of the pieces failed to slide out easily and I had to sand those two pieces by hand. It is so annoying when this happens. I am not pushing the workpiece but letting the blade do the work and I am using a fast speed and a number 5 ultra reverse blade from Mikes workshop. I also make sure I do not apply side pressure when going round corners. What is so annoying is when I have taken the time to make a puzzle and some of the pieces don't slide up and down properly I end up throwing it away. I don't know if anyone else has this problem.

Hi everyone. Some of you will be aware of the problems I have had with my excalibur 21. I sent an e-mail to the supplier last week as I had come to the end of the road, he offered to have the saw picked up and give me a full refund. I then sat down and thought about it and the problem here in the UK is that there is not much available to replace it with. I could get a Hegner but they are vastly overpriced and to get one to replace the excalibur I would be looking at over £1000 and that's ridiculous. In desperation I stripped the excalibur and re-built it and now it is ten times better. I would point out that I feel I had a one off, a bad apple in a box of good ones. I decided to keep the saw and e-mailed the supplier and main importer. I gave a detailed report on the blade clamps and the supplier is sending me two complete arms complete with clamps. The problem that I still have is that when I tighten the T bolt onto a new blade it curves, as though pressure was coming from just one side and when I apply the white tension lever the top clamp has an angle to it. The problem with the top clamp at the moment is that the T bolt is a very loose fit and I put this down to the clamp being aluminium and the T bolt steel. Also the grub screw the other side of the clamp keeps working loose and I keep screwing it back in with the allen key until it is flush with the side of the clamp. A current problem I have with the excalibur is when I am making children's jigsaw puzzles with 3/4 hardwood and using an ultra reverse number 5 blade. I keep getting an angle to the pieces so they will only come out one way. I have tried everything to square the blade to the table. I have to cut the puzzles on the dewalt 788 but use the excalibur for portraits etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Geoff.

Hi Beeber. I make a lot of jigsaws to sell at craft fairs, mostly animals and not more than a dozen pieces in 3/4 hardwood. I use ultra reverse blades from Mikes workshop and usually it is a number 5 blade. With this blade it leaves a perfect finish so there is no need to sand the sides. I give the top and bottom of the wood a light sand prior to finishing. I tried making them in pine when I first started but getting a really good finish was the problem. Pine is okay if you are going to paint them but this is time consuming and the profits take a plunge. I find that people love to see the grain of the wood and feel it before buying.

My bench from floor to bench top is 34 inches high and on this I have an excalibur 21, a Dewalt 788, a drill press and some other bits and pieces. Some may say it is a little high but as Wolfmoon said, it all depends on what you are sitting on. I have a stool with a back and arms and it suits me fine. I am quite close to the workpiece when cutting. When you make your bench make sure it has a thick top and you may want to add a thick rubber mat for the scroll saw to stop as much vibration as possible.

Hi Everyone. Hope you all had a good Christmas. I have been using scroll saws now for many years and I have found that each scroll saw has it's own little problems, most of which can be sorted out and the saw finely tuned so in theory there should be no need to touch it for a long period of time. However. When i got the Excalibur 21 it was different again, the principal of scroll saws has always remained the same but the way they are built remains different with each one. Yes, I had a number of problems with the saw when i first got it as it came direct from the factory where they are made and they probably make all manner of machines in the same factory and have very little or no idea of what scroll sawing involves, the people just follow a set of guidelines on the production side of things. The people I bought the saw from are the main importers into the UK so they don't even open the box, they just store them in their warehouse and ship them out to whoever buys one. With a lot of help from Ricks scroll saw site and other people I managed to sort most of the problems out. I am more used to the blade changing now but it is still a pain, I have no problems fixing the blade in the bottom clamp. With the top clamp I push the blade in and tighten the nut but it does not always connect with the blade for some reason. I adjusted the tension knob at the back so that there was plenty of blade going into the clamp. I measured it and checked it and it is fine but quite often the clamp just wont tighten onto the blade. The other problem is the grub screw the opposite side of the clamp. every two or three blade changes i have to screw it back in flash as it keeps working loose.The supplier said they will be re-designing the blade clamps at a later date and they will let me know when these are available as I will be the first to buy them.

Well done Tvman. I am sure you will enjoy many years of scrolling on the ex-21. I have had mine a few months now. As you got it from Seyco it will be all set up and ready to roll so just enjoy and show us some things you make on it.

While I was waiting for Mike's blades to arrive I bought several packs of Olson blades, never again. When I placed the order I was confused by the way they number the blades and yet everyone else states if is a number 3 blade or a number 5. When the blades arrived I was shocked to find that a third of them were twisted. I would clamp the bottom first and the top of the blade would then be at right angles to the clamp. Only by using pliers could I get the blade in the clamp. A few days later Mikes blades arrived. I was in heaven, what an amazing blade the ultra reverse is and now I use nothing else. They are that good I have very little if any cleaning up to do afterwards and I cut birch ply as well as a variety of hardwoods in different thicknesses.

Thanks guys for all your advice and your right, a router table will be the best option looking at the economics of the problem. I already have a nice router and lots of router bits so I just need the router plate insert and will make a small table for it. I was thinking of hinging the top to make it easier to adjust the amount of router bit that comes out of the top as I cannot bend very well. Thanks again.