Bill WIlson

Jerry brings up an excellent point and one that tends to get lost when people start thinking about doing large, complex projects like this. "You take one step at a time. Remember your basics. Cut one piece and do it well. If you "hurry it up" with each piece, the finished product will "look like you hurried it up." If you enjoy scrolling, by all means go for it. My attitude is that patience has nothing to do with it. I feel that there is no difference in making clock parts each day, or sawing unrelated things each day. The sawdust looks the same." They see the enormity of the finished project, the sheer size, the number of cuts, and lose that perspective. Jerry's advice is spot on! The biggest challenge I see with building the larger clocks is the assembly. Most patterns have pretty good instructions, but getting all the pieces to fit properly, and assembling them in the correct order takes a little time and an ability to conceptualize the process in your head, before you start gluing stuff together. On the larger projects I've done, it paid to dry fit everything, at every stage of the build. Occasionally you will find anomalies in patterns or perhaps a cut isn't perfect that will affect the way things go together. By dry fitting everything first, you find any problems and if you do it several times, you are less likely to make a mistake when you make it permanent.

Yes, I've done it and gotten good results. Many woodworkers already have these ingredients in their finishing supplies. If so, it can be more convenient and a bit cheaper to mix your own rather than to go out and buy a separate product. If you don't have these supplies already on hand, then there probably isn't much benefit to going out to buy them vs just buying the Danish oil. You do have some control over the ratio, which may be considered an advantage. You can add more poly/varnish to make the blend more protective. You can add more oil to make the finish look and act more like a hand rubbed finish. More thinner makes it go on easier, but will require more applications. There's nothing really mystical about commercial Danish oils or the home made blend. It's just another alternative that can give the hobbiest woodworker a little more flexibility. And now for the requisite safety PSA. If you use rags or paper towels to apply any oil finish, whether a commercial product or your own mixture, use caution when disposing of the rags. Spontaneous combustion is a possibility if oil soaked rags are not handled and disposed of properly. The simplest method is to lay them out flat to dry, on a noncombustible surface. This is best done outdoors. You can also soak them in a bucket of water. There are other methods, but these are the simplest. Whatever you do, do not ball them up and leave them lay about or throw them in a garbage can while they are still wet. I take these same precautions with rags used to apply oil based stains.

My condolences to Mike's family. Truly a great loss for them as well as the entire scrolling community. RIP Flying Dutchman.

It's kinda funny. Please allow me to reminisce a bit. When I first started scrolling, over 20 years ago, I had no idea the kinds of projects & patterns that were available. I found a couple Patrick Spielman pattern books in the local bookstore and I did primarily Christmas ornaments and a few plaques. About 11 years ago I joined a scrollsaw club. Just about all the guys in the club at the time, seemed to be working on these great clock patterns. They would bring them to the meetings for the brag table and I was profoundly impressed and somewhat intimidated. The founder of the club had done over 200 different ones and had many of them on display in his house. I'll tell you what, that was an impressive display. I thought that was what scrolling was all about and resolved to someday build one of these masterpieces. Then I discovered the scrolling sites on the internet and a whole different world of scrolling was revealed and it keeps evolving. Our club has grown and only a few of those original members are still with us. Almost no one cuts these big clock patterns anymore. Most of the newer members have never tried it. These days our brag table is comprised of other types of scrolling, like portraits, word art, intarsia, compound cutting, etc. In a way it's great, because the variety of projects means that there is something for every interest and every skill level, but in a way I think it's sad that the interest in these great old clock patterns has faded. We've talked about it at our meetings several times and I still resolve to build one (or more) someday. I've made several smaller fretwork clocks, but have not yet tackled anything like the Apostles Clock, the Dome Clock, the Shopiere Clock or the Chimes of Normandy Clock. Perhaps when I'm retired and have more free time. Displaying one of these masterpieces is problematic. Most folks just don't have the room for something like this and it's certainly hard to child proof them. That has probably contributed to the perceived decline in their popularity. But they are an important part of the history and heritage of scrolling and I'm glad to see someone else interested in taking on the challenge. Please keep us posted on your progress. I'm anxious to see how it goes. Good luck! Oh and thanks for indulging my ruminations.

Zimmerstutzen brings up a good point about checking & cracking on cross-cut slabs like this. As the wood dries, it will shrink much more across the grain than it does with the grain. On and end cut, you have grain running 360 degrees and as it dries, it's shrinking in all directions, putting tremendous strain on the piece. It is very difficult to prevent cracking as the wood dries. Also cross cut slabs are much less stable and prone to warping as they dry, for much the same reasons as it cracks. You need to rough cut the wood as thick as possible, because you will likely need to do some serious flattening once it's dry. Pieces like this can end up looking like a (broken) potato chip if they aren't dried very carefully. The key is to slow the drying process down dramatically. There are chemical stabilizers, such as Pentacryl, designed to aid in this process. Zimmerstutzen's method of drying the slabs in a bucket of sawdust is very interesting. I have no practical experience with trying to make slabs like this for woodworking purposes, but I've cut enough firewood over they years to see what happens to end grain as it dries. Good luck.

The problem I've found with most "stainable" fillers is that they can leave a tell tale halo around the patched area, especially in open grained woods like red oak. The filler gets deep in the pores of the wood and is very difficult to sand out completely. Filler almost always absorbs stain differently than the surface grain of the surrounding wood, so the patch becomes as obvious or more so than the unfilled hole would have been. This is less of an issue on closed grain woods, like maple. My advice is if you are using any filler, prior to applying a finish, be careful not to get it spread too far beyond the patch area and then sand thoroughly.

I've read good things about Timbermate Water-Based Wood Filler. I like to use the wax "crayons" from Minwax. They apply easily and holes can be filled after finishing. What I like even better is my 23 gauge pin nailer that leaves a hole so small that most of the time it doesn't even need filled. Bottom line is that regardless of what you use, nothing I've found really blends perfectly and makes the hole "invisible". All fillers are a compromise, to a certain degree. Use the one that is the easiest and cheapest, which is why I like the Minwax crayons.

Kevin, I use scrap pieces of plywood as a sacrificial backer on my drill press. My son-in-law went dumpster diving a few years ago and came home with tons of scrap plywood from a couple local cabinet shops. I ended up with most of it. It was mostly 1/2" thick stock, with one surface pre-finished. I use the larger pieces for all sorts of things like jigs & such and invariably I end up with enough small pieces that I have plenty for use on the drill press. Since I use my drill press for everything, I move the backer around for each hole. The scrap piece still lasts pretty long. I do the same thing with my Dremel drill press station that's used primarily for small entry holed for scrolling. Find yourself some scrap that you don't get emotionally attached to and you won't worry about throwing it away.

On a whim, I tried RIT fabric dye on ornaments last year. I got the pre-mix stuff and used it straight out of the bottle. Little messy, but I was pleasantly surprised with the results. The ornaments were made out of 1/8" BB ply and I got the color I was looking for, by just dipping them and letting them soak for a minute or two. I experienced no raising of the grain, which sort of surprised me.

Spirals can be pretty temperamental when it comes to keeping them in the clamps. I'll second Ranger Jay's recommendations. Flat end spirals are much easier to work with, in that respect. Only problem is, they don't come in the smallest sizes. I had to get some FD #2/0 and #3/0 spirals for a particularly challenging (for me, anyway) portrait project earlier this year. I was able to successfully untwist and flatten the ends. I had some Olson spirals a few years ago that I couldn't untwist/flatten to save my life. Don't know if they were just made from harder, more brittle material or what, but I broke more than I used.

I'm fortunate to live in Western PA where domestic hardwoods are plentiful. I can get anything from exotics to veneered plywood to Baltic birch to all of the domestic species of lumber I want within about a 40 minute drive from home. I also have a stash of roughsawn lumber, mostly cherry & maple, cut from trees on my father-in-laws farm. It's been air drying in the barn for about 10 years now. I'll probably never use it all. Having a bandsaw and planer really provides for maximum flexibility. I can use just about anything I come across and that includes scavenged lumber that someone else was going to burn.

A member of our scroll saw club does primarily portraits and he's very good at them. He learned how to scroll using spiral blades and says he just can't get the hang of straight blades. That's pretty much the opposite of how most folks are, but it's testimony to how ingrained our habits and preferences can become if we let them. My suggestion would be to use a straight blade to learn. As others have said, you will have more control and I think the technique is more natural and intuitive. After you feel comfortable with the straight blades, then mix in some projects using spirals. Some patterns just lend themselves better to one or the other. For spirals, look for patterns with few straight lines or sharp, inside corners. Rule of thumb; If wandering off a line or rounding out an inside corner is detrimental to the appearance, then use straight blades.

The thing with compressors is that once you have one, you tend to find all sorts of other uses for it. I too just wanted something to use to blow dust off of stuff and maybe air up a tire or two. I ended up with a portable one that is between 20 & 25 gallon capacity. I can't recall the brand at the moment. I think it may be Campbell Hausfield, but it could be a Craftsman. I'm not necessarily recommending it. My recommendation is to get the biggest one that fits your budget and the available space. Mine isn't big, by any stretch, but it has enough capacity for me to run air nailers, spray guns and some other air powered tools. While I wouldn't mind a bigger one, I like the portability, but I also have a pancake compressor that I'll take with me when working on the kid's houses, that's primarily used for the nail guns. I wouldn't want to use it for my general shop tasks, even just blowing dust around. It is even noisier than my larger compressor and runs a lot more often, under those conditions.

I've used several different types over the years. Loctite General Performance spray worked really well for me and was much cheaper than other brands. Unfortunately my local Lowes stopped carrying it a year or 2 ago. I never worry about how hard the pattern is to remove. I want it to stick like crazy, because if a detailed fretwork pattern starts to lift during cutting, that is a major pain. I spritz on a little mineral spirits and let it set for a minute and it comes right off. I know lots of folks don't like messing with the MS, but I'd be lost without it.

What is the center of your plywood made of? Can't tell from the pictures. Is it multilayered plys or some sort of solid/foam core with veneer top layers? Reason I ask is that sometimes the solid/foam core types are more prone to breakage than true multi-layered plywood. Baltic birch ply is your best bet. You didn't say what size blades you were using. If you were using Crown Tooth, then theoretically they couldn't be installed upside down, because the teeth cut both ways, but if they were too large, then that would definitely contribute to your problem. For a single layer cutting like that, I wouldn't hesitate to use a #2/0 blade.

It may depend on the table. On my Dewalt, I would notice, over time, a distinct tendency for the wood to drag as I was moving it across the table. A little steel wool and an application of paste wax made a huge difference. I don't use my scrollsaw every day, so I only had to do this a few times a year. I've been using the same can of Johnson's Paste for as long as I can remember and it will last many more years to come. The Dewalt table was a casting, with a machined surface. My EX has what appears to be a solid aluminum table. There aren't any visible mill marks in the surface. I'll be interested to see if & how often I need to apply paste wax to it.

Never seen or heard of it being tried before, but I would be concerned about compatibility problems mixing the BLO and the lacquer. Be interested to hear how/if it works for you. I suggest you test it on some scrap first before committing to a project.

+1 on the Dust Deputy. I bought one a few years ago and wish I had done it sooner. Worth every penny, IMHO. That thing is a game changer in my shop.

I doubt 2 1/4" layers would fit in a standard frame. Might try 1/8" or you could use mat board.

Danish oil/Antique oil/Tung oil finish, depending on the brand, is either a blend of approximately equal proportions of varnish (or polyurethane, which is technically a varnish), oil (generally boiled linseed oil) and thinner (Mineral Spirits) or just varnish and thinner. There really isn't anything mystical about it and you can make your own by using the desired ingredients you may already have on the shelf. By adjusting the proportions to suit your purpose, you can make your own "special blend". The more oil you use, the less sheen and the more hand rubbed look you will achieve. The more thinner you use, the faster the oil is absorbed into the wood and the quicker each application dries, because you are essentially adding less finish to the wood. The more varnish/poly you use, the more protective the resulting film will be and the greater potential to achieve a glossier look.

You will be fine using any good quality wood glue. If you really want a means of mechanically fastening components of something like a fretwork clock, you might consider a pin nailer. This is a pneumatic tool that drives very small, headless nails. Frankly, I don't think it's necessary. I have a pin nailer, but have never considered using it for that particular application. Just wanted to toss that suggestion out there.

I don't think there is any objective way to answer your question. I think one learns best when they are open to as many learning avenues as possible. That is what makes forums like this so great. You get advice and opinions from a wide variety of perspectives. When you couple that with resources like YouTube, you can learn in a few hours on the internet, what it took me months/years to learn on my own. Keep an open mind and don't limit yourself. There is much to be learned out there and it's to your benefit to take advantage of as much variety as you can.

I have a couple small peanut butter jars full of DNA that had been used to clean shellac out of my spray guns, brushes, etc. Rather than throw it away, I keep re-using it, at least for initial cleanings. It's probably got enough shellac in it now that I could spray it. I actually use diluted household ammonia now to clean up my spray equipment and brushes. It works as well as the DNA and is much cheaper.

Cherry is especially prone to burning. What kind of #5 blade? For compound cuts, a skip tooth blade or something similar with larger gullets (no reverse teeth) is usually recommended. They clear the sawdust out of the kerf better, thus reducing heat build up. If you don't have any of those available, use the biggest blade the pattern will accommodate.

Nicely done! I really like this pattern. Something about it just draws me in, every time I see it. It's kinda like a scrollsawn version of a Thomas Kinkade painting.