Sycamore67

It would be great for people to tell what saw they are using any the kind of projects or thickness and type of wood. It would help me to understand the issues they describe.

I just had a Generac 22kw system put in. I have used it twice now...One for 9 hours and another 12 hours. It runs on natural gas and kicks in automatically. It also runs each week for about 10 minutes.

This is an interesting discussion. One thing to consider is the material that you are cutting. From what I have seen on forums Hotshot does a lot of coin cutting and his observations are great for cutting coins. I would think it is a different case cutting thin brass, copper and aluminum. JT's observations seem to apply to these thinner softer materials.

Before I make any comments, I want to mention that I cut mainly thicker woods 3/4" to 1-1/2" . So my observations apply to that on my Hegner Saw. What you cut and the saw you cut with are all part of the equation for how different blades cut. I find that the MGT blades are aggressive for me. They seem to want to cut on their own. They are great for cutting thicker material as are the PS Woods Super Sharps. I know that many people use the FD ultra reverse blades but they do not work for me in the thicker woods. The teeth are not big enough to clear the saw dust efficiently. I use mainly FD Polar blades and do not notice the drift that some describe. I do not even think about drift but just concentrate on following the line. I also will slow my saw down at times when I am cutting detail in thicker woods. I recently cut some of the compound reindeer that were just over 1/2" tall and ran my saw very slowly to get the cuts done properly. I just do not have the control on such small things with high saw speed. I pay attention to the blade number especially when cutting puzzles. If I am cutting a Judy Peterson puzzle from 3/4" wood, I will use a FD Polar #5. This gives me a clean cut with the right amount of kerf so the pieces fit together nicely. A #3 blade results in tight puzzle pieces and a #7 loose pieces. I also find the higher the blade number the more difficult to cut tight turns well. The other thing is that the type of wood also makes a difference in how the pieces fit. Maple gives very clean cuts and the pieces slide easily. A puzzle cut with the same blade from poplar or a softer wood may be tighter. But, everyone has their own style, type of work and type of wood and one needs to experiment to find what works best for them.

I am curious as to the size and what blades did you use? Such a great job in thick material and gives a different feeling than if cut in thin material.

With the amount of sap in Christmas trees, it is not something I would do.

Excellent work !!

Outstanding work !!!

Your puzzle is very creative and well done.

I very much appreciate the kind comments.

Very well done!

Finding a good mouse or mouse pad can be a huge help with arthritis. But, this should also carry over to the rest of our work. I found that holding on to work pieces when I scroll saw can cause my hands to hurt. I sometimes glue small knobs temporarily into a work piece to make it easier on my hands. Also, remind yourself to relax your grip on a work piece. I guess I am very sensitive to this topic as I have had serious surgery on both hands. The hands are a precious resources and we need to protect them. I constantly try to find ways of doing things in my workshop that are easier on my hands.

Interesting, I have had the quick clamp for quite a few years and never a problem with slippage. I do not clean or sand the ends of my blades.

That is a great price for a set of bits. My bits are either Freud or Whiteside and a single but is more than your set. For not heavy use, the less expensive bits are fine. I had a recent project where I ran 400 feet of Red Oak thru a bit and the but shows little wear.

Normally, I bring them into PowerPoint and adjust the size. However, this pattern was a pdf file and when printing a pdf file you can adjust the size. I think I printed it out at 75%, 66% and 50%.

I made several of the Steve Good layered manger ornaments as presents. His pattern was for a 4" diameter but I found this too large and made some 3", 2-1/2" and 2" The small one was getting difficult for me to cut but made it through. I stack cut these 4 at a time from 1/8" Baltic Birch ply. The finish was Watco Danish Oil and then either shellac or lacquer.

I have a homebuilt router table with a PC7518 3.25'hp router. I have a Incra router lift in the table. It is a heavy duty router and gets a lot of use.

The Laser I bought was on eBay and shipped from China and quite a bit less than the one from Amazon. It is about $90 and free shipping. You can find a lot of them on ebay by searching for 'Laser engraver" It will print on an area of about 3" by 3". It can take several different formats of pictures but I have used JPEG. A clean image with sharp lines works best. A lot of clipart can be used. The software is not great but not too bad and once I had used it a bit it worked fine for me. You have to fool around a bit with the settings but not too difficult. It is not real fast. The 1" diameter BB pieces that I engraved a name and date on took about 4 minutes. A bigger graphic with more detail can take over an hour. You have to treat it gently especially the plug in connections which are a USB to your computer and a power connection. Now, I am thinking if I want to buy a much bigger one that engraves faster and also can cut 1/8" BB.

I recently posted a project of a Baby Elephant Puzzle by Judy Peterson and received nice compliments. Several people commented on the puzzle tray that I had made. I have made a lot of her puzzles for my Grandkids and make these puzzle trays for each of them. It makes it much better to keep things picked up and not lose any pieces. I decided to put together some pictures showing how I make the trays. They are made from a piece of ½” and ¼” plywood. I make an outline of the puzzle as a pattern and cut it out on the ½” plywood. I typically sand the cut out on the ½’ piece using a sanding mop. The ½” and ¼” piece are glued together, the assembly is recut to have clean edges and edges sanded or routed to have a nice round over. I like to mark these on the back with my name and a year. I have used a varied of methods but recently bought a very cheap laser engraver. Now, I take 1” diameter plywood disks and engrave my name and year on to them. I drill a 1" shallow hole and push the disk into them. I finish the trays normally with shellac. I put the first coat on with a 1” foam brush which lets me get into the smaller areas. I will sand lightly after that and then use 2 coats of spray can shellac.

I agree with jerrye about editing. I would edit to have 5-10 seconds of several stages of the process. That way someone could see the entire process in a minute or so. Probably would be good to add some simple text to each stage.

I have tried A lot of different adhesives and use 3M77 spray adhesive. Glue sticks never worked for me and took to much time.

Several possibilities that could cause loss of tension. Probably good to check tension after you saw for a few minutes on a new blade.

The eyes are made with a brad point drill. Easy to do with good results.

I started making the trays for my grandkids and their mom. It made it much easier to pickup puzzles and put them away. Otherwise, there were puzzle pieces everywhere. I think I have made more than 50 puzzles for them.

I would say that Ash cuts hard and easy. It has a very obvious grain and you can feel it as you cut. Parts of the grain are hard and other softer. For me, maple is uniform in how it cuts.