CharleyL

My DeWalt 788 was bought used and it came with a Jim Dandy lift. It works, so I haven't looked for anything else. I'm a combination feeder. I do some projects top feeding and some bottom feeding. My choice is a bit random, but it mostly depends on how many small and close together holes are involved. I tend to top feed more when the pattern areas get dense and bottom feed on the less dense hole areas. I've been doing it this way for several years now and haven't gone 100% either way. Charley

Scrappile, I'm using either candle wax from broken or "to short" candles, or the paraffin sealing wax that comes from the grocery store, nothing fancy. The blades hold so little on their sides that I've never had any problems with it affecting finish stains, oils, or poly. Most of the wax that the blade holds onto in the blade teeth gets rubbed off in the first blade stroke or two. The wax on the sides of the blade gets into the pores of the metal, and this is what keeps the blade cooler and helps prevent burning. It doesn't last very long, so it needs to be applied frequently. I either just rub the sides of the moving blade or cut into the wax and then use light side to side pressure as I'm backing the blade back out of the cut in order to get the wax against the sides of the blade. The cut length into the wax is never deeper than 1/8 - 1/4". A box of paraffin wax from the grocery store has about eight roughly 1/2" by 2 1/2" square pieces of wax in it. I usually cut one of these in half with the scroll saw, as I need a new piece. Usually both halves end up somewhere around my saw, so at least one is nearby when I need it. In truth, I probably loose more pieces of wax than I actually use. My wife saves me broken or "too short" candles, and if I have some of them, they will get put near the scroll saws and gradually used up or lost too. I sometimes completely refill my wax storage box when I finally do a thorough cleaning of the floor around my scroll saws and under the tool chest, putting all of the "found" pieces of wax in my little wax box which is nothing more than an old 4" X 6" wooden box that I keep my wax pieces in near my saws where I can conveniently reach them to use them again. Postage stamp sized pieces of wax usually just get tossed or swept up. I could probably remelt them and make larger pieces, but wax is cheap and not worth my time to recover them. I likely waste way more wax than actually gets on the blades, but again, it's cheap. I also wax my scroll saw tables with Johnson's Paste Wax before every scrolling session, and sometimes every 3 or 4 hours if cutting all day. If you let the paste wax dry to a haze and then wipe off the excess, it will never cause finishing problems, but it will make your work float around the blade as you cut, allowing you to get better accuracy. Better lighting that eliminates shadows and false blade images is also very important. That's why I began using a light on each side of the saw table, pointed at the blade cut point. Originally I was using draftsman's halogen lights, but switched to some nice white LED lights earlier this year. With the many LEDs in each light they create even less shadows than the two halogen lights did. Now my hands don't get sunburned and I don't burn my head on the halogen lights any more either. The LED lights that I bought are $19.95 each at Lowes. I liked the lights, but wasn't happy with the spring clip attachments, so I made a bracket from aluminum that wraps around the upper arm of my DeWalt 788 and I attached the goose neck of the lights to this bracket, one on each side of the upper saw arm. If you decide to do this, only buy the lights with the spring clip base. The ones with the weighted base are not made the same, even though the goose neck piece looks the same. It's much easier to attach the goose neck from a spring clip light to a new bracket than it is to try to come up with a way to attach the goose neck from a weighted base version of the light to a home made bracket. See the link for my post about these lights below. http://www.scrollsawvillage.com/topic/17818-improved-lighting-for-my-scroll-saw/?hl=charleyl#entry175181 Sparkey, I agree. It's not necessary to run the saws fast. The blade can only remove the amount of wood that the gullets of the blade teeth can hold for each stroke of the blade. Running the blade faster may help you cut a little faster, but you won't be anywhere near as accurate, and the accuracy of following the pattern lines as perfectly as possible, while achieving smooth curves, is what makes a good scroll saw project. Running fast or using blades that are too large for the tightness of curves that you need to follow in the pattern burns the wood, overheats the blade, and dulls the blade faster. They break sooner too. You need to feed the wood into the blade at a speed that allows accuracy with a blade and speed that can remove the wood from the cut slightly faster than you are feeding it. It's all a balance between you, the blade of choice, and the blade speed. Applying too much feed pressure to make a blade cut faster will distort the blade, making the cut in the wood curved. This is very bad when trying to cut thick or stacked patterns. I run my blades tight. a 3-4 blade tightness setting on a #1 Reverse tooth blade in my DeWalt 788. I avoid excessive feed pressure and sideways pressure on the blade, and I can cut pine or Baltic Birch plywood for well over an hour before the blade becomes dull, and I rarely break a blade. Scrolling should be fun and as accurate as you can make it. Not a race to completion. It's the journey, not the destination, that should give you beautiful projects and enjoyment in scrolling. Don't worry about how fast you can cut a pattern. Strive to make it as perfect as you can and let it be completed whenever it is. Charley

Thanks for the complements, but you may grow to hate me after you slide too far down this "slippery slope", but at least your scroll sawing lumber expenses won't be as high as some other woodworking projects can cost. Stick to pine (clear pine with no strong growth rings or knots) and thin 1/8-1/4" Baltic Birch plywood at first. Growth rings will deflect the blade as you cut through them at angles. Yellow pine is nothing but trouble because of the hard strong growth rings. Slow growth white pine with almost invisible growth rings is the best pine to use for scroll sawing. For making the largest reindeer I usually look through all of the #2 pine and 2 X 4 stock at Lowes and Home Depot, and pick out the boards that have these traits through most of the board. Then I take them home and chop out the areas that don't meet these requirements, leaving only the best clear areas to cut into blanks for making the reindeer. For the largest of my 4 sizes of reindeer, pieces of 2 X 4 cut flat on the table saw to 3/4 width by the thickness of the 2 X 4 (1 5/8") make great material for this size reindeer, since the grain will be more flat in the piece like "quarter sawn" wood. I use white poplar for the mid sized reindeer because it's a little harder than pine but still cuts easily, and it makes the mid sized reindeer a little less fragile. I use hard maple for the smallest size reindeer because they are so very fragile with their legs smaller than tooth picks. When I first started scroll sawing I was always looking for easy patterns to cut out. I found that many children's coloring books had some great patterns in them. I used stationary store White-out to make bridges in the pattern lines to keep pieces from falling out after the cuts, and then made several photo copies of each to use as "easy to do scroll saw cutting patterns". I cut these out and gave them away to friends with children, while I improved my abilities to follow the lines and choose the right blades and cutting speeds. I gradually took on more complex patterns as my abilities increased, until they were no longer challenging enough. Then I began buying more complex patterns and cutting them until they no longer were very challenging for me and I began seeking smaller and more precise patterns to cut. It's been over 40 years and 5 scroll saws since I first started scrolling. About 12 years ago I discovered compound (3D) cutting. It was at a woodworking show where I watched a band saw demonstrator make a rough looking large 3D reindeer on a band saw. He didn't manage to sell me a band saw, but I was "hooked"on making 3D projects !!! So I went home and tried doing it myself. My first 3D reindeer and projects were cut on my band saw with an 1/8" blade, and I had to design my patterns myself because I couldn't find any. Then I tried using my scroll saw and doing smaller patterns the same way. Getting the smoother cuts with little to no sanding afterward got me completely hooked on using the scroll saw for cutting these and I haven't done compound cutting on my band saw since then. When you are ready to try compound cutting, send me a PM with your personal e-mail address and I'll send you some of my patterns. Send me your home mailing address and I'll send you some samples. For more information and some great patterns in compound cutting 3D, look for books by Diana Thompson. She has published several books of 3D scrolling patterns now. Frank Pozsgai has also published books on doing 3D scrolling, but some of his patterns are not correct. Like maybe he drew them and published them, but he never actually tried to cut them out. Charley

It can get warm, but not hot enough to hurt if you put your hand on it for an extended period. After an hour or so of cutting, mine definitely gets warm, but it is quite a bit below the temperature that can burn a bare hand. I've never checked the actual temperature, but I have an IR temperature gauge, so I'll try to get the motor temperature for you the next time I cut. This will probably be tomorrow. You should check your motor brushes. There should still be spring tension of the spring between the cap and the actual brush, and the brushes should be more than 3/8" long. When you put them back in, be sure to orient the curved end the way that it was when you pulled it out. If the brushes wear to the point that the spring touches the armature of the motor, the motor will be destroyed. Buy new brushes when they reach about 3/8 in length or at least check them very often when they start to get near this length. Charley

Slow the saw down until it doesn't burn the wood that you are cutting, but remember that dull blades will burn the wood too, so set the speed a little slower if you notice during cutting that the cut is starting to burn. Don't expect a blade to last forever. A blade that turns blue in the cutting area is going too fast and is overheating. It will soften and break where it turns blue very quickly. Slowing the saw and more frequent use of blade lubrication is my best recommendation here. With a DeWalt 788 you won't break blades very often if you are running at the correct speed and are using the right blade for what you are cutting. Even with a #1 or #1/0 blade, I run my blade tension very tight, typically 3-4 on the DeWalt 788 (push down on the upper blade grip as you tighten the blade clamp, for repeatable blade tension settings). A good Flying Dutchman blade will usually last me an hour or more when cutting pine, about 1/2 hour when cutting hard maple, and they need replacing because they are "too dull" and not usually because they broke, but I also like the Olson PGT blades for certain uses. Buy a few dozen of each of different blade sizes and brands and decide for yourself which ones you like best. Keep notes so you will remember which work best for you for each type and thickness of wood that you cut. You will soon develop favorites and can buy them in larger quantities. Blade life will vary a lot with the different woods that you cut. Usually the harder the wood, the quicker the blade will dull, but woods like cypress will dull blades quickly because of the silica content, even though it is a softer wood. Certain other woods also have high mineral contents that will dull blades quickly. It's just the cost of cutting that kind of wood, so you have to live with it. In quantity, a blade will cost less than $0.20, so it isn't a budget buster when you need to replace it. Don't "cheap out" and try to use a blade when it gets dull. Replace a blade when it doesn't feel right or becomes obviously dull and the quality of your cuts and cutting speed will be higher. Keep a count of how many blades that you use and/or break for each project and you will quickly decide that this cost is very unimportant with respect to the overall cost of your hobby. When I finally decide that I need to buy blades I usually buy several gross at a time, and it's usually when I'm down to my last 2 or 3 dozen of the size that I'm using, or one of the other more commonly used sizes for me. Then I always seem to be in the middle of a big project and I count the days and the number of blades used until my shipment from The Wooden Teddy Bear http://www.woodenteddybearonline.com/x/ gets to me, but I've always been very pleased with how fast they have shipped my blades to me. I keep my blades in 5 1/2" tall prescription pill bottles that are given to me free by the Walgreen Drug Store that I frequent. Each blade type and each brand gets it's own container, and I cut out the label that came on them and insert it into the bottle, so I can re-order the exact blade and type again. I also attach round sticker labels to the bottle caps and write this information on them as well, but since I will likely get the tops on the wrong bottles someday, the label added inside the bottle will show what is actually inside the bottle. I frequently lubricate my blades (every 5-10 minutes of cutting) by slightly cutting into a piece of household sealing wax or a broken piece of candle and with a slight side to side motion as I'm pulling the blade back out, to lubricate the sides of the blade. Household sealing wax is available in grocery stores, and a 1 pound box will last you many years, even if using your saw daily. Some say that covering their project with packing tape lubricates their blades, but I haven't had very good luck with this. I've just started my annual "Reindeer Manufacturing Production Process", again making small compound cut reindeer to give away during the Christmas Season. This will be year #7 that I've been doing this, and each year my production quantity has increased. I made 426 reindeer and gave them all away this past Christmas Season. I'm not sure that I can beat last year's quantity, but I'm going to try. I make 4 sizes. The largest is about 3 1/2" high and the smallest is just over 1" high. I make the middle two sizes into pins and the smallest ones into ear rings. The ear rings are for "special friends" since they are harder to make, require 2 of the smallest and hardest to make reindeer, and cost more (for the gold and silver jewelry hardware) to make them. When you get good at cutting curves and following pattern lines closely, I'll show you how to make these. They aren't as hard as they look. They take me 6-10 minutes each, depending on size, with the longest time required for the smallest reindeer. Attached are some pictures of them. Any woman or teen who helps me in any way during the Christmas Season gets handed a reindeer or reindeer pin as I wish them "A Very Merry Christmas". Most men (who are not woodworkers) don't appreciate them, so they are only offered to the women, but I'll also give one to a man, if he is interested. I posted more reindeer information, these pictures, and more back in December of last year, so a search of my posts will bring up several links to more information. Charley

Now all you have to do is figure out how to get rid of the vinegar smell before you deliver the project to it's new owner. Sorry, but I don't have a good solution for you, but prolonged (a week) exposure to Sunshine seemed to work the best. It didn't eliminate the odor, but did reduce it. Shellac is a good quick drying sealer that works well under many finishes. Applying a coat or two of dewaxed shellac over the unfinished wood before you paint or stain it might work to seal in the vinegar smell, but this is just a suggestion, and I haven't tried it myself. I have several 5 gallon pickle buckets from Firehouse Subs that I bought about this time last year, and I have tried many methods of removing the "dill pickle smell" from these buckets without much success. I bought them because they were supposed to be "the toughest 5 gallon plastic buckets available", according to searches on the internet, and they seem to be. I bought them from the local Firehouse Subs Store ($2 each donation) to use as dust collector bins under my Oneida Dust Deputy. After trying many concoctions to get rid of the pickle smell, and failing, I realized that it really didn't matter what my collected sawdust smelled like. But it was absolutely necessary to vent my vacuum to the outdoors, because my first attempt to run the vacuum and Dust Deputy with the first pickle bucket made my whole shop smell like a giant dill pickle. (I kept having an irresistible urge to eat a hamburger with a sliced dill pickle). I've since moved the Dust Deputy to a 25 gallon metal drum and switched from the Shop Vac to a rebuilt and re-purposed whole house central vacuum unit that is vented to the outdoors. Charley

The cyclonic part of that Seyco unit looks exactly like my Oneida Dust Deputy, except for the Seyco label on it. I've been very impressed with how well my Dust Deputy separates the scroll saw dust from the vacuum line. I've been using my Dust Deputy with a re-purposed whole house central vacuum unit. to clean my shop floor as well as connect to my scroll saws. In a little over a year since installing it I've picked up about 17 gallons of sawdust and debris and still don't have any measurable amount of sawdust in the central vacuum unit bag or canister. It has all ended up in the bucket under the Dust Deputy. These Dust Deputies are easy to install. You just need to mount it to an air tight collection container, like a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a seal-able lid and some vacuum hose with the right sized fittings. Most vacuum repair centers can fix you up with those parts very reasonably. Your wife's old canister vacuum will provide a very adequate vacuum source for just a scroll saw, especially if the saw dust is all removed before the vacuum. The only missing part in this is the funnel shaped collection port, and I found that I don't even need it. My vacuum hose is just tie wrapped to the side of the lower blade guard of my DeWalt 788 and the air flow into it is enough to draw the saw dust from the lower end of the saw blade over and into the end of the hose without any kind of special collection funnel. If you want the vacuum to turn on and off with the saw, just get one of those control units like previously suggested. Sears was selling one under the Craftsman name for years, so here is another possible source if you want an automatic control. The Dust Deputy will be the most expensive part of this setup, but believe me, it's well worth owning one. A shop vac will also work well with this setup, but they are very noisy. Find an old canister vacuum somewhere and re-purpose it. They are much quieter than a shop vac. Charley

Mikes Workshop is now Wooden Teddy Bear. Mike sold the business. I guess they are keeping the website open because so many people continue to order from the Mikes Workshop Website. In fact, I heard that Mike has now passed on. Charley

Just be sure that you buy the one intended for clamping the blade. It has a flat piece in the end that swivels as it contacts the blade. There is a nearly identical looking wing bolt that is used with the DeWalt routers that does not have the flat piece in the end and will not work well as a blade grip. Pick the part number from the exploded parts view of the saw to order it and be careful if buying it from a Service Center as the counter clerk may grab the wrong one from the bins. Just make certain that it has a flat smooth end on the bolt part and you will be good. Charley

Eddie (Greenie), I love what I do, and I also love to share what I know with others, especially when they are thankful for it. It takes someone (like me maybe) to get you started. The rest is up to you. Don't hesitate to ask if you should need a tip or two to get you past the tough parts. I'm certain that I or one of us can help. I'll be watching to see what great projects you make now. Thanks, Charley

You don't need to enlarge the hole in the table. You need to increase the blade tension and learn not to push the wood to the point where it hits the edge of the hole in the table. .A 2 X 2 , if this is the actual dimension, is likely too big and causing problems when the upper blade grip comes down and hits the wood. Most scroll saws can't handle a full 2" thickness of the wood. 1 3/4 - 1 7/8" is all they will usually handle. Please tell us what model saw you are using and what size and type of blade that you are using?. Also what kind of wood you are trying to cut? Charley

Rolly, Yes, that way works, but the end result isn't the same and I prefer my way. Use whatever you like best. My intent was only to teach the basics of how to do it for those that have been unable to grasp how to do it in Photoshop and my way teaches how I like to do it. There are other ways too, but they take more steps. Charley

He (me) also drives a train (see my avatar). It's not wood related, but it's a lot of fun. No one has asked me about my new avatar. I'm driving this train part time in our Village Park in the town where I live. It looks like a wood burning steam engine, but it has a 4 cylinder commercial gasoline car type engine in it. There are three open (with a roof) passenger cars behind the engine and a full train is about 70 people. I've retired 4 times now, and I have gone back to work each time for different reasons, (but usually for significantly more money). This time it's a "totally for fun, low stress job", and I love what I'm doing. I will also be operating a 2 story high carousel part time, after they finish installing it probably by Nov 27, the beginning of our Christmas Holiday Season. The train ride closes down at the end of October, but then re-opens between Nov 27 and Dec 23 in the evenings to give a Holiday Tour through the heavily decorated park. It will be even better if the carousel is running by then. The train, and probably also the carousel, will then re-open for the Summer next year in April. Charley

One that nobody has mentioned yet is if you have cut a pattern from thicker solid wood, is to just sand the pattern off with a random orbit sander. It definitely isn't a total solution, but it does work quite well when you need to sand the project anyway. I've tried everything that has been posted, including sanding. Each works better for certain projects than others. It's up to you to try them and stick with the one that works best for you and what you like to make. Charley

OK, Several days ago I promised to show you all how to easily create a cutting pattern from a photograph using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. These are fairly simple steps, and while I'm using Photoshop and not Photoshop Elements, these steps should (from my memory of Elements) be available in both.(I used to retouch photos for the advertising and photography industry). I'm going to use a photo of Cristie Brinkley for this demonstration as she's easy to look at. Step 1 - load your photo of choice, either color or black and white, into Photoshop. (See the first photo Christie B 1.jpg). Step 2 - Go to the "Image" pull down and then select "Mode" and select "Grayscale". This will remove all of the color from your photo leaving your photo in Gray Scale. (See the second photo Christie B 2.jpg) Step 3 - Go to the "Image" pull down and then select "Adjustments" and then "Threshold". There will be a slider under the photo for you to adjust the threshold level to get the black and white threshold where you want. When you click on "OK" Photoshop will lock the threshold setting of your photo. (See photo Christie B 3.jpg) You should now have a pretty good pattern to work from, but it won't have any bridges to tie the loose pieces to the main piece. You will need to do this by painting them in. Create a new layer by selecting "Layer" then "New". Anything that you do to the photo now will be on this layer and not on the photo, so if you mess up you can delete the layer without affecting the original photo. If you should need to do this, open the "Window" pull down and select "Layers". A new small window will open that shows two bars. The lower bar is your original "adjusted photo" and the upper bar is the layer containing your bridges". The eyeball on the left end of the bar can be clicked to turn the viewing of that layer on and off, but it won't erase it. If you truly want to erase a layer you need to click on the layer bar to highlight it and then click on the trash can icon at the bottom right. Now to draw in the "bridges" - First make certain that the layer that you want to modify is highlighted in the "Layers Window". Then go to the "Window" pull down at the top of the screen and select "Tools". A long narrow vertical window will appear. Keep this window open as you work, because you be going to it often. You can move it, or any tool window around if it gets in the way by simply dragging it by the blue bar at the top. About 2/3 of the way down this window are two overlapping squares. When you click on one of them a grayscale window will open. You need to make it fully black or fully white by selecting the appropriate corner of the pop-up window.. Then click on the other box and make it the opposite color B/W. From now on, until you change it, these are the two colors that you can paint with and you can just click on which ever you want to use at any time. If you are painting in black and make a mistake, you can cover it with white, or the opposite if you are painting with white and make a mistake. For most bridging you should select the "paint brush" located about 1/4 of the way down on this window. When you do, some small windows will open at the top of the main window to allow you to choose the style of brush, the size of the brush and the opacity of the brush. For making "Bridges" choose the regular round brush shape, a size to suit you (experiment to find the right size) and always use 100% opacity for making bridges. Now select the "Color", either black or white from the two overlapping squares. Clicking the little double ended curved arrow near the two color boxes will let you switch quickly from one color to the other. OK, you are now ready to paint in the bridges. Remember, you are adding color (black or white) to a clear layer that's above the original, so you can add to or erase the colors without affecting the photo underneath, as long as the correct layer has been selected in the Layers Window. Coloring white over a black area will effectively "Erase" the black in the main photo. Then remember to "Save As" your photo under a new name so you don't save over the original. In fact, do this several times as you work, so if you really mess up, you can just go back a little ways by opening the photo at the level that it was at the time you last saved it. There is a way to combine the layer with your photo that will make the file size a little smaller, but it is permanent, so if you haven't saved it as a layered photo, there will be no going back. To do this go to the "Layers" pull down and then select "Flatten Image" at the bottom. It will reduce the photo file size, but it is permanent and you will not be able to edit the layers of the photo again if you did not save them as a layered photo before you flattened them. I hope this helps. If you have problems or questions about doing this, please ask here. I'll try to check in daily for at least the next few days. If you do a lot of photo work, or would like to hand draw or edit patterns directly on your computer, a Graphics Tablet is a way better way to draw or edit than a mouse. A company called Waycom made mine. It will work with most graphics programs and not just Photoshop or Elements. Using a standard PC mouse to draw or edit photos on the computer is like trying to draw with a Hockey Puck. A pencil or pen shaped version of the mouse is much easier and more precise to use. http://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-tablets/intuos?gclid=CjwKEAjwlZa9BRCw7cS66eTxlCkSJAC-ddmwiH80Zw3q1_XM38xE28EzOzoRFV618iG8JHDvieLmjhoClBDw_wcB It's a mouse pad sized electronic board (available in several sizes) that you just use in place of your mouse. It comes with a wireless mouse as well as a special wireless pen that you would use for more accurate drawing or editing. Either begins working as soon as it is within about an inch of the top surface of the board and it recoginzes which you are using, so you can switch back and forth at random. As you move the mouse or the pen across the board, there is a 1:1 relationship to the cursor on the computer screen. Touching the tip of the pen to the board begins a line. As you move the pen on the board, it draws a line on the screen. You use settings in your graphics program to change the line width, style, or density. Changes in the pressure of the pen tip make the line wider of finer, just like when using a felt pen, but the line can be down to just 1 pixel wide with just a light pen tip touch. The pen has an eraser tip on the back end too. Flip the pen over and it writes or erases with whatever color the second color box on the Tools Window of Photoshop is set for. Wacom also makes an electronic form of air brush to use with these tablets. With practice, you can air brush paintings and artwork in your favorite graphics program with it. Wacom is the industry standard graphics tablet that's used everywhere in the graphics industry. Mine is about 19 years old now, and is still working fine. They are very rugged and reliable. The pen tips and the board surface are replaceable and reasonably priced, and Wacom has great great tech help and repair services. Charley

An urn does not have to be made from wood that thick. 3/4" thick is more than enough, and frequently they are made from 1/2" thick hardwoods. Do you have any urn plans? They are not very hard to build. I have an Acrobat pdf file of the plans for the ones that we make free for NC veterans that I could send to you. It may not be exactly what you are looking for, but should give you the basic ideas and size for you to design what you want from it. We took extra steps to be certain that all of the standard plastic and cardboard cremains containers that come from the crematory would easily fit in it, so that it could easily be placed in the urn without the need to open the cremains container. The bottom of the urn is removed for this step and then replaced with 5 stainless screws (to keep the correct orientation - 2 front, 3 back). The plans do not include any inlay information, so others should be consulted for how to do this. We place a laser engraved 1/8" thick birch emblem into a 1/8" deep recess in the front and bottom of these, as you will see in the plans. Send me a PM with your real e-mail address and I'll send it out to you. Charley

Most of my scrolling for the past few years has been compound cut (3D) scrolling. Since all of the outside pieces of wood will be discarded, I've been using common stationery store rubber cement to bond the laser printed paper patterns to the wood. It holds well and is relatively low cost and can be removed with mineral spirits, but since all of the outside pieces of wood get discarded when compound cutting, I never have to remove it. At the other end of the price scale is Applique Film. It's a clear mylar sheet that can be laser or photo copier printed that has a sticky back (peel and stick) that is re-positionable several times before it will no longer stick. I buy it at an art supply store. I use it when scrolling and power carving because I frequently use pieces of patterns printed on this film and stuck on the wood in close or adjoining relationship to each other. I can cut or carve through it and then just use my finger nails to lift and peel the remainder off the wood. It leaves no residue behind, but it costs about $70 for a box of 100 sheets of 8 1/2 X 11" size. For me and my carvings, this is well worth it for it's ease of use, but I don't use it for everything because of it's cost. Has anyone tried printing a mirror image of their pattern (most printer software will let you do this) with a laser printer and then ironed the image face down directly onto the wood? If you use a laser printer and can get dark clear pattern lines, this technique works quite well. Attach the pattern face down along one edge with tape so you can lift (hinge it up) to check for any missed spots and replace the sheet perfectly aligned so you can re-iron the missed areas. You may need to do this several times to get the complete pattern transferred. One of the small hobbyist irons or a traveler's compact iron works well for this and I use this technique occasionally. The toner used in laser printers and photo copiers is a high temperature black wax in very fine powder form. It melts easily at about 250 deg and transfers from the paper to the wood. Wintergreen oil applied to the wood or through the paper is a non heat method that some (but not me) have used to transfer laser printed patterns with moderate success, but neither of these seem to work very well for the very fine detailed patterns. I like to experiment with new ways of doing things. Sometimes they work well and sometimes they don't. Practicing something that seems to work can sometimes make it a great new method. These fall into this category. Charley

I have a re-purposed whole house central vacuum unit that I've rebuilt and installed in the attic of my small shop with pipes running to inlets in my shop. I mostly use it for scroll sawing, but I have added an Oneida Dust Deputy and a 20 gallon metal collection drum to it. Since adding the Dust Deputy, there has been no visible saw dust in the base canister or fabric filter of the vacuum. It's all now going into the metal collection drum under the Dust Deputy.. The Dust Deputy does a fantastic job. With the metal end of the hose just tie-wrapped to and alongside the lower blade guard of my DeWalt 788 it is picking up all of the sawdust coming off the lower end of the blade. Unfortunately, it doesn't get any of the sawdust that comes off the blade above the table (I'm working on this problem). You could do this same thing with an old canister type household vacuum, a Dust Deputy, and a 5 gallon pail (use a metal pail or stack 2-3 plastic pails together for increased resistance to collapsing) and it should work just as good and be much quieter than a shop vac. My central vacuum exhausts to the outdoors, so I'm not worried about micro fine dust getting through the Dust Deputy and the filter in the central vacuum unit and then back into my work area. I'm not sure what to tell you to do about this when using a canister type vacuum, except to suggest that you make a panel to put in a nearby window and route the exhaust of the vacuum through a hose and out through a hole in this panel. The exhaust from any vacuum is the source of most of the noise, so this should make working near the vacuum much more pleasant (not so for the neighbors though). They do make mufflers for shop vacs and central vacuums, but I've never tried one. My central vacuum exhaust is pointed toward a 250 acre lake, so I'm pretty certain that it doesn't bother anyone, except maybe the Canadian geese, and I can only hope that it helps to keep them away. I don't yet have a good solution for the sawdust coming off the top of the blade, but I scroll saw in my detached wood shop and any floating dust in the air is trapped by the pleated filter in my heat pump air conditioner with the fan in it running constantly. When sawdust builds up on the table of the scroll saw I just remove the vacuum hose from under the table and use it to clean the table top, then replace it in the tie-wrap under the table. Some saw dust still falls to the floor, and my present recommendation for this is to use a carpet wider than the scroll saw area to catch this falling saw dust. Then vacuum this carpet after every scroll saw session. Hopefully some of these ideas will help you. Charley

Kevin, That's some impressive work. I like them all, but feel that light colored names on darker backgrounds or darker names on lighter colored backgrounds are easier to see and read. Maybe take the time with a big mop sander to de-fuzz them before painting would be good to. (just constructive criticism from a friend to help you do better and better) How did you pull this off in the heat? I almost melted in the 96+ degree heat here while working outside today. Your shop must have been brutal to work in yesterday and today, even with BIG fans running. Charley

That's very good news, Mimi. But now we want to see what you make with your repaired scroll saw. Please post some pictures. Charley

The potentiometer needed for the DeWalt 788 is a 50 K ohm linear taper. Radio Shack sells one like it with the right physical as well as electrical size for just a couple of bucks, but the shaft on it is too long and there is no flat side for the knob D hole shape. I cut the shaft with a hack saw to make it the same length as the original, then figured out where the flat side needed to be by turning both the new and old potentiometer CCW to the stop. I then filed the shaft of the new potentiometer to create the needed flat on the side of the shaft to fit the D shaped hole of the original knob. Fifteen minutes and the saw was good again for about $3 and a little effort. Your Delta saw likely has the same speed board as the DeWalt. There is a huge amount of mis-information in this post. If you don't know the right answer, don't post at all. The electronic board takes care of the voltage control and speed of the motor. It electronically eliminates the "Heat" that would be encountered if using an old wire wound potentiometer in series with the motor winding to control the motor speed. The potentiometer used in these modern saws never sees more than a few milliamps of power, and therefore, does not get hot. Wire wound potentiometers for motor speed control went out with the dark ages and trolley cars. Modern electronic circuits like these speed control boards don't wear out. They sometimes go bad when a voltage spike in the power line damages them, but they don't wear out like an old mechanical machine. Most will be around and in perfect working condition until they are technically obsolete and scrapped. The Radio Shack 50 K Ohm linear taper potentiometer even looks like the original, except for the long shaft with no flat. A hack saw and a file make the only modifications needed. An AUDIO TAPER POTENTIOMETER is logarithmic, which means that it is non linear and increases resistance and an increasing rate as the shaft is turned. It WILL NOT WORK correctly for this application. Charley I'm a retired (EE) Automation Engineer

You didn't buy it yet? It's probably already gone. That's a great price for a variable speed Hawk. Charley

That works great on car bearings with no side seals. I've done it myself. But It won't work on DeWalt 788 bearings. They are all side sealed. The one on the motor shaft eccentric would be big enough to do this way if it didn't have the side seals, but nothing is going to get inside this bearing if you try to grease it like you would car bearings. You can add grease to the tiny bearings that have the the steel sleeve inserts by removing the sleeve, adding a tiny bit of grease (tiny bearing), and then replacing the sleeve. A big wad of grease in the palm of your hand isn't going to work. Charley

Be careful, that bolt is a pivot point, so don't over tighten it. You have to allow that point to pivot. The stop nut nylon insert is supposed to hold the nut from backing off, but it doesn't seem to always work. I used the blue Lock Tite on the threads of a new nut and new bolt when I had the problem. I used a new nut to avoid any chance of the nylon insert not holding well because threads had already been formed in the nylon insert of the original nut. The blue Lock Tite on the threads of this new nut was added insurance to keep it from backing off. Sorry, I did this several years ago and had forgotten the details. Kevin, You can't grease the bearing on the eccentric cam of the motor. It's a sealed bearing. The ones that I've added grease to are the small ones with the sleeve insert. Remove the sleeve and add a tiny amount of synthetic grease inside the hole of the bearing to lubricate the needles. I used a tiny wooden round stick (I think they are called "applicator sticks" from the drug store). Only a thin coating of grease on the last 1/8" of the end of the stick is needed. Don't gob it on. Then replace the sleeve and rotate the sleeve several times to distribute the grease before putting the saw back together. The grease that doesn't go inside the bearing is waste. It won't do anything, except fly off and make a mess of the inside of the saw when the saw is running again, so wipe off as much of this excess as you can. Charley

I can't do a whole project with them, but in certain tight areas I do well with spiral blades. I generally don't like them for most uses though. Charley