CharleyL

The double sided tape that is sold by Peachtree Woodworking holds well, but not nearly as hard as double sided carpet tape. This is what I use when stack cutting. I use several 1/2" X 1/2" (roughly ) pieces spread out depending on the pattern. It's best to place them between locations that will not be cut away. See http://www.ptreeusa.com/rtr_jigs_double_sided_tape.htm It's expensive, but you don't need much, and it lets the layers separate easily. I usually put a thin putty knife between them and twist it slowly, maybe in several areas, depending on how delicate the pieces are. I haven't broken a piece since I began using this tape. It works for me, but I sometimes will use pin nails driven in with a pneumatic pin nailer through areas that will be cut away, and then avoid removing these areas until the last. It depends mostly on what I am making, and how large it is. Charley

Steve Good's website has a compound cut chess set pattern that you might look at. Maybe ideas for modifying these pieces will be easier once you look at Steve's patterns. http://www.stevedgood.com/chessset.pdf Charley

I wax my scroll saw tables evry day before use. I wax the tables of all of my tools at least once per month, or more frequently if used heavily. Charley

If you want a dry surface, use a drying oil like Tung Oil or BLO (Boiled Linseed Oil). These will dry hard, but it will take several days to get really hard. They will soak in and "pop" the grain like mineral oil, so the appearance will be the same. The smell will go away in time too. Apply them, let them soak in, then wipe off the excess that doesn't soak in after about 20 minutes and then let them dry for a few days. Several coats can be applied the same way, a day or two apart without additional sanding, unless you want to. A Strong Word of Caution - When using any drying oil, but especially BLO, a chemical reaction takes place during the drying that gives off considerable heat. This will not harm your project, but you do need to be very aware of this when it comes to disposing of any rags, brushes, etc. because a bunched up oil soaked rag can spontaneously start a fire. Whenever I use a drying oil I will hang my rags on the neighbors chain link fence or submerge them in a pail of water with a metal cover for 24-48 hours before wringing them out and disposing of them in the trash. In either case, they are immediately removed from my shop. I had left a linseed oil soaked rag bunched up on my workbench while I was rearranging some things in my shop so I could better position the pieces for drying that I was applying the oil to. This process took about an hour, a bit longer than I expected, and when I picked up the rag off the workbench to use it again I burned my fingers. It was already that hot in the middle of it. DON"T LEAVE THE RAGS AND APPLICATION MATERIALS IN YOUR SHOP AFTER YOU USE DRYING OILS OR YOU MAY NO LONGER HAVE YOUR SHOP OR HOME. Charley

It's hard to hurt yourself, but not impossible,, especially with older saw models that have more open movement of the arms. I've never cut myself with the blade, but did get stabbed in the finger from a broken blade in my older Delta Q3 saw and have been bruised up a few times when hit by moving arms and blade clamps. Charley

I frequently use emery boards for sanding fuzzies off of tiny wood projects cut on my scroll saw, but I don't put them in the saw. I've also been known to trim their width in order to get into small areas. They have proven to be quite handy, but they don't last very long. Charley

I recycled some white oak from a whiskey barrel and it smelled exceptionally good. Does this count? Charley

Scott, A great video, but you left out your shrink wrapping system. Where do you get your shrink wrap and how do you do it? Your work area is also much neater than my shop, but I'm usually building large cabinets, etc. as well as doing small scroll saw work at the same time. When scrolling, I always drill the holes and cut the inside areas of my work first. This gives me more to hang onto during most of the cutting process and reduces breakage. I then work gradually outward from the approximate center and cut the outer profiles last, but much of what I do is considerably smaller than what you do. Charley

Aluminum Oxide IS ANODIZE, but anodize is electrically created. They can build it up very thick if they want to, and do it when they want to protect aluminum. They can color it with stains and then bake the color in too. Taking it completely off leaves raw aluminum that will oxidize easily and the thin layer will easily rub off, leaving gray lines on your wood. Wax it often and keep it waxed, if you take the aluminum oxide (anodize ) off. Charley

15 hour drive for me, each way. That leaves me out. Charley.

The only bad that I see in doing this is that it removes the aluminum oxide coating from the table. As long as wax is kept on it, you shouldn't have a problem, but the aluminum surface will deteriorate quickly if you fail to keep it waxed. It will also leave gray marks on the wood if the wax is gone. Keep it waxed from now on and it should be good. I don't understand why so many woodworking tools are built with rough or ridged tables. The designers are apparently not and have never been woodworkers. Charley

You can also try placing a small mirror on your saw table and looking at the holes in the bottom side of your project while trying to thread your saw blade up through the hole of choice. It helps my students. Charley

Whatever it was, it's gone. The Craigslist post has been removed. Charley

Can you tell us where you got it? A link would be great. Charley

With that much trouble keeping up with sales, you should raise your prices. The volume of sales may slow, but you should end up with more money and not need to work so hard. Chances are, an increase won't affect the volume much at all, so long as your quality remains. People are willing to pay more for something with quality. Try raising things 10% and see what happens. Somewhere there is a point at which your prices make you more money and you don't need to work so hard for it and the customer is still happy too. Inflation is happening all around you. Prices of everything is going up. Your prices should go up too. Charley

I guess that I keep more blades around than most people. I use the 5 1/2" tall pill bottles from Walgreen's. They give them to me unused All I have to do is ask for them. I limit my requests for the bottles, so I leave them some, but I can usually get about 10 of them at a time, with the caps. One bottle will easily hold a whole gross of blades. I keep one dozen open and in with the rest, then just push the bundles aside when I need a blade. If none are loose, I open one of the bundles and put the loose blades back in. I'm careful to put the blades in correctly so the bottom of the blade is always in the bottom of the bottle. That way, I don't even need to check them for correct orientation when I put one in the scroll saw. When I buy blades from the wooden Teddy Bear or other sources, I make certain to cut their label from the plastic package and save it. I either tape it to the outside of the bottle with clear packing tape or just throw it in with the blades, and in either case, it's there when I want to re-order. There are just too many different blade types available so I don't want to make a mistake and buy a different kind of blade. I also bought 1 1/4 sticky backed round paper labels that I can attach to the lids, and I label them so I can quickly pull the correct bottle out of the box when I need a blade. I made a box from Baltic Birch that holds my bottles of different types of blades that I like to use, and the box keeps them in their own places with a hole for each pill bottle, much like @Hawkeye10's block of wood keeps his blades organized. . I once had a block of wood with holes bored in it and all of the blades sticking out of tubes like his, but it got knocked off the table and many of the blades got out of their tubes and got mixed together. So I now keep them in the pill bottles with lids on them so this will never happen again, if they get dumped. The box is usually sitting open and on an upside down soda crate next to me while I'm cutting, but it can quickly be closed to take with me when I go to do a show somewhere. I'm in the process of making a larger box, because I have 22 different types and sizes of blades now and only 14 pill bottles will fit in the original box that I have. The blades share this box with scroll sawing tools that I like to keep together and handy, so they are in the left half of the box and also in the lid of the the same box. One of these two boxes will become totally dedicated to bottles of scroll saw blades and the other will have more space for the tools. I'll decide when this box is nearly finished which way It will be, but both will receive partitions and/or holes for bottles to keep them organized. Charley

Make sure you get the Blue Loctite. The Red requires a torch to get it loose, which will likely destroy the saw. Orange is also near impossible to get free. The blue is designed to hold threads from moving, yet will release when the need arises using only hand tools. Use only the blue. I bought a peddle type kids fire truck when my boys were young. I put it together and used red Loctite. Nothing has come off of it, and my boys are now in their late 40's. The grand kid is now enjoying his daddy's fire truck. Charley

I also have a DeWalt chuck from Lowes that I bought several years ago. It has the hex shank and horizontal groove in the stem for use in power screwdrivers, etc. but I can also put it into either of my drill press chucks and it works fine for holding even the tiniest #80 drill bits that I have. I think it was about $26 when I bought it. Lately, I've been using my Dremel and the Dremel plunge type router base for drilling straight holes in scroll saw work, but I also have used my table top drill press in the past. Charley

That bend is quite high up the blade from where the clamp and set screw usually contacts the blade. Are you certain that the set screw is causing this problem? Something to consider when adjusting the blade clamp set screws is to make certain that the blase moves straight up and fown without any side to side movement. These set screws also set the upper and lower blade clamps to be directly one above the other. If the blade has any blurred image when the saw is running, one of these set screws is out of adjustment. The blade must move straight up and down and not sise to side at the cut point. The saw will still cut if not adjusted correctly, but it will be very difficult to get a perfect 90 degree cut, even if the saw table appears to be at a perfect 90 degrees to the blade. A way to measure this is to check the distance of the blade in it's up position and it's down position with respect to the side of the blade opening with a dial caliper. They should be the same. I cannot do good compound cutting if the blade is not perfectly set at 90 deg to the table, both in the side angle as well as the back angle.. Setting the side angle is easy, just adjust the table, but getting the back of the blade at 90 degrees to the table requires elongating the mounting holes of the upper or lower yellow arm of the saw where the upper or lower blade assembly attaches In my DeWalt 735 saw. The other brands of saws like the Delta and Excalibur saws likely will need these mounting holes elongated to accomplish this adjustment as well. It doesn't take much filing. Each hole only needed to be elongated about 1/2 of the screw diameter in my saw. A few strokes with a small round jewelers file in each hole was all that was necessary.for my saw, only the holes in the lower arm needed elongating. You will have to determine if, and then which holes need elongating in your saw by checking your rear saw blade angle to the table, and then see if you can move the upper or lower blade mechanism forward or backward in the existing mounting holes of the upper and lower arms of your saw to see if you can adjust the blade to make it exactly 90 degrees to the table. If you can't, then elongating of the holes may be necessary. Charley

It's always the little things that you didn't check that bite you. Glad you found the problem. I frequently hold a piece of tubing, one end up near, but not in my ear. Then I move the other end around neardifferent parts of the machine while listening for the objectionable sound to get louder through the piece of tubing. This helps to find the source of these noises. From there, the real problem is easier to find and usually easy to fix. Sometimes this works very well and sometimes not so well. When it doesn't work I switch to a long screwdriver, hold the end of the handle against my ear, and then touch different parts of the machine with the tip of the screwdriver. Bad bearings in larger machines and motors are easier to find this way. Charley.

I run the saw as fast as I can with the blade that I'm using and the type and thickness of wood that I am cutting, but if the wood shows burning either the blade is getting dull or the speed is too fast for the wood being cut. When the wood cuts show burning, you are overheating the blade and this will take the temper out of the blade, making it dull faster and break quicker. It's also hard to steer the work when cutting at high speeds. Find the speed that does not burn the cut and your blade will last longer, your work will look better, and you won't need to sand the burn marks off. Scroll sawing is more of a journey, not so much a destination. Even your pattern following will be more accurate if you slow down, but do try to cut as fast as you are comfortable with as long as you aren't burning the wood and overheating the blade. Some blades let you cut faster without burning, some will not. Waxing the blade with a candle or paraffin will help cut faster, but you have to do it often. Charley .

I would find the smallest drill bit that I can get the blade to fit through by drilling holes in scrap and increasing the drill bit size and then testing to see if the end of the blade of choice will fit through it. A very tiny plade size would be best for tmaking this cut. A larger blade or blades can be used for the rest of the project. Then I would carefully drill the starter hole in the project with that drill bit. I would choose a location, like the sharpest corner of the pattern piece to drill the hole, since perfectly square cuts are rarely ever perfectly square anyway.. Usually. this method will result in a completely invisible starter hole after the piece is cut and a little sanding is done. The result will be a piece that is one blade width smaller than the opening all the way around, but shaped perfectly to fit without sanding. Very careful sizing and placement of the access drill hole is the only critical part of this. The alternative is to use any drill bit and cut out the pattern hole out of the original piece by closely following the pattern lines with the blade cutting directly on the pattern line and discarding the cut out piece, then cutting a second piece by also cutting along, but directly adjacent to the outside of the pattern line and then sanding the edge of this piece to fit perfectly into the hole in the original piece. If done perfectly the piece being inserted will be about half the thickness of the blade too large all the way around, but should require a minimum of sanding to perfectly fit the hole in the original piece. Following the line very accurately will be required to do this option. Charley

A quick pass over the back side with a random orbit sander and 220 grit sandpaper will clean up all the drill splinters much quicker. Sometimes it leaves a bit of sawdust in the holes, so I blow the project off with compressed air after sanding and it cleans the holes out quickly. Drilling the holes one at a time from the back side takes too long for me. Sanding is much faster. Charley

For a light, my saw came with the light from DeWalt. It was terrible for scrolling because it was more of a spot light than a flood light and got very hot. It also cast blade shadows, making it difficult to find the pattern line through the shadows sometimes. I replaced that light with two Halogen drafting board lights, one on each side of the blade. This mostly solved the shadow problems, but they got very hot and sunburned my hands. I also burned my face on them more than once. I'm now using what I feel is the ultimate solution to lighting for my scroll saw, and they were way cheaper than anything that I had tried before. Lowes carries these and they are less than $20 each. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Style-Selections-13-25-in-Adjustable-Stainless-Steel-LED-Clip-On-Clip-Desk-Lamp-with-Metal-Shade/1000003084 I made a bracket that attaches to the upper arm of my DeWalt 788 that allowed me to mount one of these lights to each side of the upper arm of my saw. These lights don't get hot. They provide a very bright and even white light, and having one on each side of the blade angled down at about 45 degrees completely eliminates the blade and moving upper blade grip shadows, making it much easier to follow the pattern lines. Here is the link to my first post about these lights complete with pictures. The bracket is just two easy to make pieces, made from 1/16 and 1/8" aluminum plus two bolts and nuts,that wraps around the upper arm of the saw. No modifications to the saw are necessary, but you will need to remove the spring clamps on the base of the lamps. The lights will completely remove the blade shadows, provide very bright and even white light, and they don't burn my hands or face, even if I spend the whole day scrolling under them. To me, they have been the perfect solution to lighting on my DeWalt 788 scroll saw. Charley

3/4" thick Poplar can be bought at other lumber yards that stock hard woods for much less than Lowes and Home Depot sell it for, but they won't carry the short and thin hobby pieces that you can get at the big box stores. If you are buying that much3/4 thick poplar, you should check around and compare prices. The Wurth Group is a major supplier of plywood and hardwoods. Do a Google Search to see if you can find one of them near you, but also ask around at the local lumber yards that are not Lowes or Home Depot to see if they sell poplar. Since poplar is so plentiful in the NC part of the country, also check the saw mills nearby, although you may need a table saw, jointer, and planer if you buy from them. Make certain that they kiln dry their wood too. You might also ask at the custom cabinet making shops in your area as to where they buy poplar. It's a heavily used secondary wood for making custom cabinets. You may find a golden source for it within a few miles from you and save considerable money... Charley