Frank Pellow

Again, I recommend a Festool. They are designed to run for many hours at a time. But, of course, such a good design costs a lot.

Some vacuum cleaners are designed for that, but they are expensive. The Festool vacuum that I plan to hook up to the Pegas-21 I just purchased has served me well turning on and off in conjunction with many many tools at many many job sites for 17 years.

Don, I bought the saw from Bear Woods. I'll let you know when the saw arrives and I have it set up if you would like to drop in and "kick the tires".

This is how I justified, first o myself, then second (and more importantly) to my wife Margaret, the purchase of another scroll saw. Almost all my woodwork now involves scroll sawing and, often, I want to have two projects on the go at the same time. Having two saws will make this easier. For instance, I could have one set up with a spiral blade and the other with a conventional blade. The saw that I have decided upon is a Pegas 21 inch: That’s a bit smaller than my old Excalibur EX-30 saw. My current saw was made in nearby Pickering whereas the Pegas is made in far away Taiwan. At least, it’s not China. At its core, the Pegas uses the same engineering as the Excalibur. That engineering was invented by Thomas Summerville, a fellow Scarborough resident, in the early 1980s. My saw was made by his company Summerville Industries but, unfortunately the General company of Drummondville Quebec purchased Summerville in the early 2000s then General went out of business around 2015. Fortunately the design has been adopted by many companies and the Excalibur brand lives on in, at least, one of those companies. Now, after the brief history lesson, lets get back to Pegas. The company is located in Switzerland and they have contracted with the same company in Taiwan that makes the Excalibur and some of its clones. Without altering the basic sawing mechanism designed by Thomas Summerville, the designers of the Pegas have made several improvements. First of all, the arm will stay in the UP position when lifted: With the Excalibur, I need to jam a paint can onto the table towards the back of the arm to keep it in the raised position. I must do this every time that I feed the blade through a hole on the piece I am cutting. Most things that I cut have at least 100 holes and some have had about 1,000. That’s a lot of paint can insertion and removal. Another feature I like is the arms tilts when doing angle cuts: On my Excalibur, the table tilts. Once tilted, it is not easy to manage the piece of wood that one is pushing through the saw. Also the mechanism for tilting my table is primitive and not as accurate as I would like. The mechanism for tilting the arm on the Pegas looks to be quite elaborate and accurate. There are two other features of the Pegas that I have already managed to separately purchase and “cobble” onto my Excalibur. Those are the clamps which hold the blade in place and the hose that blows the sawdust away from the blade. I put those on my saw about two years ago and I have been impressed by both their quality and usefulness. The new blower that I installed on my saw does a good job of keeping sawdust away from the blade but there is nothing to keep the sawdust away from the floor and my lap. In the review photos I have seen, the Pegas can be hooked up to a shop vac and that combination does a very good job of collecting the dust. I contacted Rod Sheridan (who works part time for Felder/Hammer) and told him that I have never used my Hammer Shaper as a one should really use a shaper, only as a high priced router table and that I saw no likelihood that I would ever do so. He said that he would see if he can find a buyer for it. If I sell the shaper, it will cover away more than the cost of the new scroll-saw.

I missed the forum and am happy that it is back.

Congratulations! I've heard only good things about that saw. I've just ordered one myself and, this afternoon, I plan to move things around in order to make room for it.

They operate in much the same way as the original Excalibur clamps, but they hold much better resulting in far less aggravation. But, I don't think that my saw runs any smoother.

They might not be worth $100 a set if one is calculating the cost to the designer, the manufacturer, or the seller, but they worth worth at least $100 a set to me when Installed them on my ancient EX30.

Thurman Algernon Irving, Jr. is a very impressive name. I picture someone with a name like that being a bank president. I too, was very surprised when I took to scrolling the way that I did. It's a wonderful, and useful, hobby.

One of the tree designs really really appealed to my daughter Kathleen. She mentioned it several times. I decided to use that clip art as the basis of a stand-alone ornament for her. Here is a photo:

I made this Gnome couple from a recent Steve Good pattern. The piece is cut from 6mm thick Baltic Birch plywood and stained using Saman water-based stains.

Like Don, my go-to Regular blades are Flying Dutchman (Niqua) Ultra Re verse blades. But, I prefer the Pegas brand of Spiral blades.

I frequently peruse clip art on the internet when creating scroll saw patterns. Recently, I was looking for four similar but different Christmas trees to attach to the doors of boxes that I made to hold ceramic trees. (see: Box for Ceramic Christmas Tree - Other Woodworks - Scroll Saw Village) I quickly found just what I was looking for, cut the trees out of 3mm thick Baltic Birch plywood, painted them with acrylic paint, and glued them to the doors. Here is a photo of the four trees:

It's good that you found them. Did you also see his recent 'Happy New Year' gnome. I plan to make it soon.

Thanks! It's just sad that we find ourselves placing strict limits on visitors these days.

These are the names of three (Steve Good designed) gnomes. I made Sven and Olaf last year and they are featured in the Yule display on the top shelf of the large display cabinet at the end of our hall: Most of the (few) visitors to our home this season have noticed and admired Sven and Olaf. This encouraged me to make their sister, Inga. Here is a photo of the three of them: I also decided to make additional sets of the three of them as gifts for our visitors who were most enthusiastic about the two gomes that they saw in our display.

Thanks Don

( months later. I finally got around to utilizing Steve's pattern. The resulting gnome is shown in the middle of her two companions in the attached photo:

A made two of these layered thingys using a Steve Good pattern: All the pieces were cut for 3mm thick Baltic Birch plywood. One of them is now in my daughter Kathleen's elementary school classroom and the other is in my daughter kristel's office at Canadian Girl Guide headquarters.

Well done Don! The movie played for me.

Hey Don, that was my first project too. I also cut it at a course conducted by Don. My course was conducted at Lee Valley Tools in Scarborough.

Canoes on Lake Pivabiska: Some of my happiest times have been spent in a canoe. The photos are me canoeing with my Granddaughter Isla and my Grandson Ethan; both photos taken 17 years ago. I designed the frame, the layout and the matting. Timothy (worbler) designed the pattern for the scroll saw portion in the middle and I made a few modifications to his design. This is in the predominant place for art in our home, that is over the mantle-place in our living room.

I am fairly certain that spiral blades are intended to give rough cuts. I use them where rough cuts are the effect that I am looking for. This is the case in "artistic" fretwork that depicts something like a scene or an animal. I'm attaching photos of a couple of pieces I did in order to show what I mean by this:

I do like the pattern that you used (as well as your cutting of it) but I am fairly certain that I have never seen the pattern before. I applaud your efforts in trying to give credit to the designer.

Certainly, not enough of the money gets to the workers. But, some does and I can tell you that there is now full employment at (mostly) decent wages in the mills and the forests in and near my hometown.