Bill WIlson

As a general rule, I think it's good to try different blades. If for no other reason just to see what you may have been missing. For many years I used Olson, just about exclusively. I had a bad experience once with FD #2/0 reverse tooth and just stuck with Olson ever since. The Mach series were my go to for general fretwork. I tried FD again when I needed some good spiral blades. The experienced portrait cutters in my scroll saw club all use FD spirals, so I ordered some. While ordering, I decided order some FDUR, just to try out. I was impressed with them and they may supplant the Olson MS blades as my go to blade. I tried some PS Wood Super Sharps a while back. Very good blades, but too expensive for general use, at least for me. I've not tried Pegas yet, but want to give them a go as well, one of these days. Moral of the story, I don't think any brand has the best blade in all sizes and tooth configurations, so if you use a wide variety of blade styles, then it pays to try different brands.

You're going to see more absorption of the stain in the end grain areas of the frets, which will show up much darker than surrounding areas. Not sure there is much that can be done about that. Exposed end grain, say like on the edge of the top, can be sanded to a higher grit than the edge grain or surface. You could even carefully apply a pre-stain conditioner to just the end grain preventing as much of the pigment from soaking into the wood. But inside the frets, it's pretty tough to treat just those surfaces in any effective way. One suggestion would be to try spraying with some shellac. It won't look like the Jacobean stain, but it will make it significantly darker, without as much of the variance in color between end and edge grain. If you are interested in mixing your own shellac from flakes, there are a lot more color options, garnet being among the darkest. If using the Zinnser pre-mix, then clear or amber are your only options. You could try tinting the shellac with an alcohol based dye to get an even larger range of colors. I've never done that, so I can't say it would solve your problem, but it's an option.

Thanks to everyone for the interesting replies. Our scroll saw club, The Blazin Blades of Western PA, has been in existence for over 12 years. I've been president the past 4 years. There's a link to our website below. Only a few of the original members are still with us, as many have passed away. Along with the roster, the interests of the members have also evolved quite a bit. We have scrollers of all skill levels. We're trying to think of some new ways to get and keep people engaged in the club. We've tried a number of things over the years, with varying degrees of success, thus the motive behind my post. Please keep the responses coming. It's good to get different perspectives from other folks. Thanks!

How many of you folks belong to a scroll saw club? If so, how active is your club? What sort of activities do you do? How do you recruit new members? How do you keep existing members active and interested? Does your club have a website or Facebook page? If you don't belong to a club, would you join if there was one local? What sorts of things would you want to get out of being a member of a scroll saw club? I'm not really conducting a poll, just looking for ideas and to generate some conversation on the topic. Thanks!

Good point! I think it's important to emphasize that there are other issues, besides bearings that could contribute to noise. The drive linkage has some connecting points where bolts can and do work loose and may also cause knocking. Perhaps it was Rick Hutcheson's site that you are thinking of? http://www.scrollsaws.com/

That's good to hear and kudos to Ray for stepping up to make it right.

Thanks for the review. It was thorough and detailed, regarding the assembly/set up process. I'll be looking forward to a similar detailed review of the operation of the saw. Given Seyco's history of good customer service, I suspect that these kinds of issues will quickly work themselves out of future production runs. At least that is my sincere hope. Good luck with the saw!

I've often wondered if anyone had successfully filled those holes in the EX. I wasn't impressed with the dust collection system either. I removed the hose connector and the plastic film shortly after getting the saw. Since I removed the plastic film, I haven't had too much trouble with the holes, but I'll be keeping your solution in the back of my mind.

Try a skip tooth blade (Flying Dutchman brand are called Polar), the largest size that is appropriate for the pattern. Keep the saw speed turned down a bit. The polycarbonate fuses back together due to heat that is generated by the blade moving too fast and/or not clearing the chips from the kerf efficiently enough. The skip tooth blades have slightly larger gullets between the teeth and all the teeth point in the same direction, so they are better at keeping the kerf clear, thus reducing friction and heat.

Yea, I noticed that and at first wondered if perhaps it was standard equipment on the SEYCO. I recall a few years ago, a member of our scroll saw club had a machinist friend of his make a couple for guys with Dewalt saws. I didn't get any, but thought it looked like a nice upgrade. Frankly, since then, I've come to believe that a knob like that would probably encourage many users to overtighten their clamp screws and strip out the blade chucks. I can see it being a big help for folks that have arthritis or other problems with their hands though.

No real tricks. I do use a thin steel ruler as an edge to fold the pattern against. Line it up with the marks and fold the pattern over the straight edge of the ruler, helps give a nice crisp corner. I do this before I apply adhesive, then all I have to do is fit the crease to the corner of the blank and press in place. It isn't as hard as it sounds. It's just something that needs a little extra attention to detail.

It really isn't all that difficult Melanie, but it does require pretty precise placement to ensure that your cuts aren't misaligned. The key is to fold the pattern, exactly on the dotted line. Crease it to make a sharp fold. Carefully place the crease onto the corner of the wood block, making sure the crease lines up with the corner. If anything is off, from the fold to the placement, it's best to just start over because you probably won't get good results on the cutting otherwise. Just as important as correctly placing the pattern is that the wood blank be exactly square. If the corner is off of 90 degrees, even a little, it will cause the cut piece to be misshapen. Find a simple pattern and some soft wood and give it a go. It's fun to pull the finished piece out of the middle of the block. No matter how many times I do it, it still makes me smile.

Horrible is in the eye of the beholder, but the rule of thumb is to steer away from store bought blades that aren't named Olson. I think Flying Dutchman blades are only available via internet sources. I don't recall every seeing them in a brick & mortar store. Olson and FD are the 2 most popular brands. There has been a lot of chatter about Pegas blades lately on the forums. They were brought up at our scrollsaw club meeting and one fellow says he does not like them. I don't know enough about them to recommend them or steer you away from them. Beyond those brands, the only other one I have any personal experience with is the PS Wood Super Sharp. They're very good blades, but quite expensive and they don't have reverse teeth, so I only used them in very specific applications.

Pattern designers are the backbone of this hobby. Where would we be without them? Many thanks to the contributions all of you have made.

Handy little gadget

The internet is both a great and lousy vehicle for conveying information. It's great, because you have instant access to so much info and so many people with which to share it, but lousy because things like facial expressions and voice inflexions are non-existent. Smiley icons just aren't always an adequate substitute for the physical signals you get when you are in a conversation with someone face to face. We've all spent a lifetime interpreting these physical signals and generally can read someone's intentions much better in person than we can over the internet. We're limited to the words we type and often the absence of those physical signals can make these words come off much differently than they might in person and certainly different than the speaker may have intended. I suppose as time goes by, subsequent generations will be much more accustomed to and better at communicating in this electronic medium than some of us older folks, who have trouble typing with more than 2 fingers. It's going to be a bumpy ride, in the meantime though.

If I recall correctly, Mike Morlach, fondly known as the "Flying Dutchman", sold the US distribution rights to the Flying Dutchman blades to Wooden Teddy Bear, then he retired. Unfortunately, soon thereafter he passed away.

I rarely have more than one project going on at a time. My shop time is limited, so when I start on a project, I like to get it finished. Around Christmas time, I may have 2-3 in process, concurrently, but that is typically an exception.

Have a safe trip and a great time!

Ken, I'm following your Milan Cathedral build over at SSW&C, so I know you are an accomplished scroller. I love those classic fretwork clock patterns. Absolutely magnificent!

Pretty much the same here. I can't even remember how long I've had my current can of BLO and Danish oil, but have used both recently and they are still fine. Still in the original cans.

The On-Off switches on the DeWalt are notoriously flaky. Fortunately it's a relatively easy and cheap fix. Follow dgman's advice and hopefully that will take care of the problem. Then get yourself a footswitch.

Nicely done! I'm sucker for fretwork clocks.

We all learn at different speeds and respond to different stimuli, so it's hard to say what works best for everyone. One fellow in our scrollsaw club had never used a scroll saw. Bought a new Dewalt and it sat in the box for a year before he set it up. In the meantime, he was coming to meetings and picking everyone's brains about blades, techniques, etc. When he did finally get started, he jumped right into cutting pretty intricate patterns with spiral blades. To this day (several years later), he has yet to cut anything with a straight blade. It was only a few months before he was knocking out Mike Williams and Jeff Zaffino portrait patterns at a remarkable pace. His only concession to the degree of difficulty was to enlarge the patterns, which minimized some of the really fragile, trouble spots. However, that posed a new challenge. He incorporated some kind of supplemental support structure around his table to help him maneuver the larger pieces on the saw. He has become quite proficient at cutting portraits. All that said, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that a newbie take the same path he did when starting out, but it only illustrates how different we all are and there aren't necessarily any one size fits all methods of learning how to read patterns and execute the cutting.

Hey, don't get greedy! One every 108 years should be enough for anybody.