CharleyL

As I understand it, both the Mike's Workshop and The Wooden Teddy Bear websites are now both operated and maintained by The Wooden Teddy Bear. I began buying from Mikes Workshop but then switched to The Wooden Teddy Bear when Mike sold the blade business to them. At the time I didn't know that they were going to take over his website but I;ve always been happy with the service from both sites. Charley

Great photos!! That third one makes me want to go there. I don't know why, but it does. Charley

For bottom feeding I use a 3" dia wide angle round mirror (domed style) intended to be glued to the side flat mirror of a truck to increase the driver's field of view. When laid on the saw table it magnifies the blade and holes making it easier to get the blade into the hole. Charley.

Rob, I will definitely post information about my light bracket for the Q3 when I get the time to make it. Do you have access to a Lowes store in NZ to get the lights? I haven't seen them for sale any place else here in NC other than Lowes. Charley

Ike, If you are happy with what you have, that's all that matters. I wasn't happy with single source lighting, even the light with a magnifying glass, and that's why I've gone through several versions of two lamp lighting. With the two LED lamps I think I've found what makes me happy and I've stopped searching for a better way. The halogen lights that I tried were actually brighter than these LED lights, but they got too hot and burned my head and hands. The LED lights don't get hot, are shadow free when placed in the correct position, and are perfect for me. When cutting tiny work, like my reindeer ear rings, I do use magnification, but I'm using a wearable head band magnifier, so the lenses move with me. When I tried the magnifier/light combination I found that when I moved my head the outer areas of the magnifier lens produced distortion that bothered my eyes. The head band magnifiers don't have this distortion. I'm still exploring better alternatives for magnified scroll sawing and may have a great solution for this, but I'll hold off on posting my idea for now. I'll create a new post to explain it, if/when I have the design for it worked out. Scott (NC Scroller), you must now have your lights installed and working, and you sound very pleased with them. That's great! I still have another copy of my bracket on it's way back to me from the guy who chose not to use it, and a complete bracket with two of the LED lights installed that I'll likely modify slightly to install on my Delta Q3 scroll saw. Charley

Those fuse holders are easy to open....once you know how. Just push in and down on the red piece with your finger and it should pop out into your hand, or at least come out about 1/2 way. To put it back in with a new fuse, just push in and up, and it will return to the pictured position. That little metal tab in the space below the red plastic is the latch, but using screwdrivers and prying on it will destroy it. Charley

tvman44, The LED lights come with a small wall wort kind of elongated plug/power supply that converts the 120 VAC into 12 VDC. In the last photo of the first post of this thread you can see them both of them plugged into the power strip on the rear leg of my saw stand. I left their wiring basically unchanged and just used them the way they came, except for removing them from the spring clamps and mounting them on my DIY bracket, but a friend has rewired his lights to run both lights from one of the wall wort power supplies and,.so far, his lights are working OK. He used a small aluminum box to mount his lights on instead of my bracket, and he put a small toggle switch on the box to turn both lights on and off, so his box receives power from one power supply wall wort. Then in the box it goes through the toggle switch and then out of the box to power both of his lights. The only problem that I see with doing it this way is the loss of about 1" of throat clearance of the saw. My light bracket minimizes this lose to less than 1/4". The lights are light enough that they don't significantly change the weight of the saw arm, so my Jim Dandy Products arm lift still works without even changing the spring counter balance adjustment. I've had the power strip on the rear leg of my saw stand for the previous light schemes, so I just continue to use it. The two light plug/power supplies, as well as the saw, all are plugged into it, but there is enough wire on the lights for them to be plugged into a high outlet in the wall directly behind the saw, if you wish to do that. I think from the plug to the inline light switches in the light wires there is about 3' of wire. It's about 22 gauge twin lead wire with a white stripe along the side of one wire to indicate the negative lead. From the inline switch to the LED light head there is about another two feet of wire. Without changing anything there was enough wire to route the wires from the lamps back along the upper saw arm to the rear casting of the saw, so I just attached the wiring to the upper saw arm and mounted the two switches on the casting using just double sided carpet tape. There is a tie wrap at front of the upper saw arm just ahead of the DeWalt label and another one at the rear end of the saw arm and then a larger one around the base casting after the switches to hold the wires in place. I used an additional small tie wrap near the power supplies to keep the wires from untwisting. Charley

Dick, I made a spare bracket like the one shown in my post. I sent it to a guy, who has now decided not to use it. If you are interested in doing this and If/when I get the bracket back from him I will let you know. Are you using a DeWalt 788? The brackets that I made will only fit on the 788 or the similar Delta saw. I can also try to make a drawing of the two parts of the bracket and post it, if anyone is interested in doing this. Young_Scroller, I tried the lights like you have. Getting them positioned so that the blade shadows are eliminated from the blade cutting point puts them too close to my face, and they get hot. My reason for going to all the trouble of mounting LED lights on my saw was to get away from using hot lights and yet be able to position them so that they completely eliminate the blade shadows and upper blade gripper shadows from around the blade cutting point. My LED lights can run all day long and only reach about 80 degrees F, so if I bump my hands or face into them I don't get burned. When I had the halogen drafting lights installed on both sides of my saw, they did a great job of lighting the area and removing the shadows, but they ran very hot and I kept burning my forehead on them. My hands also got sunburned from working under them all day. Using only one light, like the original DeWalt light, produces many shadows around the blade area that make it sometimes very difficult to see the blade in the shadow. If the light is too high the upper blade grip movement produces a strobe like shadow on the blade cutting area. My goal has been to use two lights that I could position so that one is on each side of the blade to eliminate these shadows. Finding and installing these LED lights has also eliminated the chances of burning myself by them. Look carefully at the photo that I posted of my scroll saw with the 2 LED lights positioned above and off to each side of the saw table. There are no shadows on the table at all, not even from the upper blade grip. This makes scroll sawing tiny things like the 3D reindeer for making ear rings that I've posted here so much easier to do and I don't get as exhausted or eye strained like I used to. If you have any interest at all in these lights, go to a Lowes store near you and try one out. When I first found them and turned one on in the store, I knew immediately what I was going to use them for. Two of them came home with me that same day. Here is a link to my ear ring post to give you an idea of why I wanted no shadows to interfere with my visibility of the blade. http://www.scrollsawvillage.com/topic/17757-christmas-ear-rings/ Charley

I have been very unhappy with the one original DeWalt light that came with my DeWalt 788 Scroll saw. I've tried several alternatives, including halogen drafting board lights. Having two lights, one on each side of the saw made a big difference in reducing the shadows around the blade, and whiter brighter lights also helped. The halogen lights worked, but they were very hot. I frequently burned my forehead on them and after cutting with them all day the backs of my hands would get sunburned, but I continued to use these lights, while looking for something better. I recently found and purchased two of these LED lights to mount on my Dewalt 788 scroll saw in place of the single original DeWalt light Shop Style Selections 15-in Adjustable Brushed Steel LED Clip-On Desk Lamp with Metal Shade at Lowes.com I designed and built a bracket to mount two of these lights to the upper arm of my DeWalt 788 saw, after my initial plan of clipping the lights to the rear of the saw table failed, because I kept bumping into the clamps with my work. The new bracket that I made wraps around the upper arm of the saw just ahead of the DeWalt label, and extends out from both sides of the saw arm. Each side extension of this bracket has a hole where I attached one of the lights, after removing it from it’s original clamp. Only a slight trimming of the bottom edge of the plastic piece that holds the saw speed control and power switch is necessary. The rest of the saw does not have to be modified to add these lights and bracket. Adding the bracket and attaching the lights to it required dis-assembly of the lamp head by removing the two screws in the plastic lens of the lamp. The lens and PC board with the LEDs attached to it can then be removed from the lamp head. Un-solder the wires from the back side of the PC board. Then remove the wires from the flex tube, and then remove the original clamp from the base of the goose neck. After installing the base of the goose neck on my new bracket I then re-threaded the wires up through the the goose neck tube into the lamp head, re-soldered the wires in their correct positions, and then re-assembled the lamp head. There is a small flat on the back edge of both the PC board and the lens that must point toward the goose neck as the lamp head is assembled. The same was done with the second lamp. The lights run on low voltage DC, so it's necessary to maintain the correct polarity of the wires when they are re-attached. There are tiny + and - signs on the PC board and one of the wires has a line of - signs on it, so it attaches to the poing with the - next to it. The other wire by default is the + wire, so it attaches to the point with the + sign next to it. I twisted the wires from both lamps loosely together and routed them back along the left side of the upper saw arm fixing them in place with tie-wraps. The switches for the two lights ended up along side of the rear saw frame casting, so I attached them to this casting, one above the other, with double sided carpet tape. Between the switches and the power supply/plugs there are several feet of additional wire that would easily reach a wall outlet if one was directly behind the scroll saw, but I have mounted a power strip to the left side of the rear leg of the saw stand, so I loosely twisted the wires together and then plugged the lights in to this power strip. The saw and foot switch for the saw are also plugged into this power strip. I’ve now been using these LED lights for almost 6 months and find them ideal for my purpose. They are very bright and emit a very white, non-flickering light that is perfect for scroll sawing. Being able to easily position them on each side and slightly forward of the blade and shining down at about a 45 deg angle at the blade eliminates all of the blade shadows and makes it very easy to follow the lines of my patterns. Running all day long the lamp housings never heat up to much over 80 or so degrees, so I never burn my head on them either. These lights would make great auxiliary lighting for most any shop tool and the price is right to have many of them, either mounted on their original clamps or on specially made brackets. I now own 7 of them, not only on my two scroll saws, but also on my band saw and drill presses. Be careful not to buy the weighted desk top version of these lights. The base of the flexible shaft looks the same but it is different than the one with the spring clamp shown in the link above. If you buy one of these it will be much harder to modify for use on a bracket, like I did. Attached are photos of this installation on my DeWalt 788. I'm now in the process of making a slightly different bracket to mount two more of these LED lights to my Delta Q3 40-650 scroll saw. If you are unhappy with the lighting on your scroll saw and have difficulty seeing where the blade is cutting because of the strobe like shadows being caused with the one light and the upper blade grip, then this modification will solve all of it for less than $45. They are great unmodified for use on other tools too. Charley

Both of my scroll saws (DeWalt 788 and Delta Q3 40-650) are on their original stands and both about the same height. I always sit on a stool when scroll sawing and the saw tables are about mid chest in height for me. Both saw stands are tilting slightly forward. Charley

I don't sell anything that I make, and never have. My extended family and close friends consume most of what I make. These ear rings and pins went to close friends and relatives this past Christmas, along with 72 compound cut ornaments cut from patterns by Diana Thompson. I used many different hard woods to make the ornaments and all were clear finished so that the natural color of the wood shows. A few of these are in the photos attached, along with some slot type 3D ornaments (I did paint some of these) that I also made and gave away, I made a total of 428 reindeer of all four sizes last year, and gave away all but about a dozen of the largest size this past Christmas Season. The block showing the four sizes of reindeer was made for me so that I could keep track of which size I was making at any given time. The largest and smallest reindeer were easy to keep track of, but the two middle sizes were confusing sometimes. The largest reindeer take me about 8 minutes each to cut. The smallest take me about 15 minutes to cut. The eyes and red nose are applied with permanent marking pens. I light sand them to remove the fuzzy edges with fingernail sanding sticks, sometimes trimming these sticks narrower to fit where needed. For the past 6 Christmas Seasons, beginning right after Thanksgiving and continuing until about New Years, I've been giving away the largest size of these reindeer (about 3 1/2" high) to any woman cashier, waitress, sales clerk, nurse, etc. who waits on me or helps me in any way while I'm out shopping, dining, etc ( most men don't appreciate them, except for other woodworkers). I also give them to children over about 8, if I'm allowed to do so by their parents. I usually place one in the palm of my hand with my palm facing down, so they don't see what I have. As my transaction with them ends I wish them a "Merry Christmas" and I hold out my hand toward them. When they reach out to me, I drop the reindeer into their hand. I most always get a huge smile and a "thank you", but frequently I also get hugged and sometimes kissed on the cheek. It's kind of weird how the women get so excited when they receive one of these. It shows them that they are appreciated for what they are doing and it helps us both get more into the Christmas spirit. This year my wife made me buy a Santa Hat to wear while I do this, but our Christmas Season this Christmas was in the 60's and 70's here, so my car wore the hat on it's dashboard more than I wore it. She thinks I'm crazy to spend so much time making and giving them away, but I love Christmas and giving gifts, however small they are, if the receiving person appreciates what I give them. I've been doing compound cut scroll sawing for about 6 years now. I was hooked on it when I first tried doing it, and haven't scroll sawn much else since then. Diana Thompson's patterns are great, but I haven't been happy with the compound cut pattern books by Frank Pozsgai. My reindeer pattern originally came from Mathias Wandel's website www.woodgears.ca, but I cleaned it up some and resized it, then filled 8 1/2 X 11 sheets with as many as would fit, to be cut out and used with a minimum waste of paper. Since the compound cut reindeer or ornament ends up completely inside the block of wood, there is never a problem with pattern removal when compound cutting. It all goes in the trash still stuck to the off cuts. I'm new to Scroll Saw Village, but I have been using and teaching scroll sawing for about 25 years now. Attached are photos of some of the ornaments and samples of the four sizes of reindeer that I make. Thanks everyone for your positive comments. I really appreciate them. Charley

I made a few of these for Christmas this year. The ear ring reindeer are just over 1" tall. I also made some reindeer pins from 2 1/2" tall reindeer. All were compound cut. The reindeer for the ear rings were made from hard maple and the ones for the pins were made from poplar. All were cut on my DeWalt 788 scroll saw using FD1R blades. Sorry about the fuzzy pictures. This camera doesn't do macro very well. Charley

WBR, My reference was meant to indicate the color of the lines, not the body of the image. Sorry, I wasn't very clear that time. The bodies of the images on my patterns are also done in gray. Having the laser printer print my patterns with the lines as sharp as possible is my goal, and because I'm using an old laser printer, the lines are always black. Charley

I usually print my patterns with a 600 dpi laser printer so, unfortunately, they are always black, but at least the printer makes nice fine lines if they are fine in the original. I've learned to cut along side of the lines, on the waste side, wherever possible. I can see the black blade cutting next to the black line much better than keeping the black blade centered on the black line. It makes me wish that the blades were some other color. Of course, there are places on a pattern where neither side of the line is waste and then I have to center the cut on the line. For improved lighting, two lights, one on each side of the blade, will help a lot to remove blade shadows and most of the strobe type flickering that comes from the upper blade grip. I have recently upgraded the lighting on my DeWalt 788 saw by installing an LED light on each side of the upper arm. They are on goose necks so they can easily be positioned slightly forward of the blade and aimed back and down toward the blade cutting point. I had to make a mounting bracket to attach them to the upper arm of my saw and remove the spring clamps that the lights come with, but two pieces of aluminum and two bolts later it was done. No modification of the saw was necessary, except for a slight trimming (about 1/16" off the rear bottom edge of the plastic piece that holds the speed control and power switch. A Dremel with a sanding drum did this quickly without the need to remove the plastic piece from the saw.. These lights are available from Lowes for $19.95 US each. http://www.lowes.com/pd_352725-47842-17783-003_0__?productId=3394398&store_code=2368&cm_mmc=SCE_PLA-_-FashionFixtures-_-DecorationsLamps-_-3394398:Style_Selections&CAWELAID=&kpid=3394398&CAWELAID=1023613436&k_clickID=6a8e8de7-eeb4-c789-6b39-000053097546 I'm extremely pleased how they provide so much nice white un-flickering light, and after running them all day the lamp heads never really heat up to more than just slightly warm. My hands were getting sunburned and I was frequently burning my forehead on the halogen lights that I had been using before these LED lights. The power switches for the lights are in-line type, and routing the wiring back along the left side of the upper saw arm puts these switches alongside the rear casting of the saw, so I just mounted them there using double sided carpet tape and tie wraps. The power supply/plugs are plugged into a power strip that I have mounted to the left side of the rear leg of the saw stand, but the wires are long enough to reach a wall outlet if the outlet is within about 2' of the rear of the saw. Charley

Frequently, in thin wood a Forstner bit isn't always the best choice because the spur and edge cutters cut deeper than the actual hole, and can come out through the back of the wood if the hole is drilled slightly too deep. I've been using a template guide that I made from 1/4" Lexan that I stick in place with double sided tape. I then use my laminate trimmer router with a guide bushing to ride around the inside of the template and a 1/4" straight bit in the router to cut the hole the exact depth that I need with no spur marks or edge scoring. I have made a few of these holes in wood so thin that the backside of my work would allow light to be seen through it, if held up to my shop ceiling lights. Having tried using the scroll saw and the Forstner bit methods, I much prefer using my router method. Charley

Frank, Thanks for the compliment. I wish I had pictures of the other similar projects that I've done, but gave them away without taking pictures. Actually, I did take a couple of pictures of them, but the camera that I used went bad and I lost all of the photos that were in it. The dentist drill carver that I have was sold by Paragrave. There are two other manufacturers selling them. One is made by Power Carver and the other is SCMI. SCMI makes the best and most reliable one These are a straight handle version of the dentist drills, which all seem to have right angle handles. They are all air powered and turn at 2-400,000 rpm using 1/16 dia shank dentist drill bits. An air brush compressor will power them. At these speeds, carving with them is like writing with a marking pen. There is no side pull. They cut wherever you point them and are a joy to use. There are carbide, diamond, and stone bits of every description available for these tools that are selling from several sources on the internet for about $1 each. If you have a friendly dentist you might get him to sterilize and save you some used bits too. That's one of my sources. The dentists use new bits for every patient and never use them over, but they are plenty sharp enough for cutting wood and safe to use if sterilized, but I soak the ones that he gives me in alcohol, as an additional precaution. For larger, Dremel type carving I use an 1/8" shank air powered die grinder. It turns at about 100,000 rpm, which is fast enough to reduce the side pulling, and it uses the standard Dremel type 1/8" bits. For me, the Dremel tools are too big and too slow to do serious carving with since they only turn at 15-30,000 rpm. Power carving with a high speed air powered tool makes all the difference in the world. These use much more air, so I connect mine to my shop air compressor. Charley

Those of you with arthritic hands may find these knobs useful. The handle can be positioned in increments around the 360 deg by just pushing the button, so you can tighten the blade and then position the handle so that it's out of the way and won't hit anything. The thread is M6X10, so it should fit many saws on the market. I know for certain that it'll fit a DeWalt 788. These are available from www.thewoodenteddybear.com and their part number is M101 but they are also available from the major hardware sources like McMaster Carr and other larger hardware sources. Charley

I've done a few projects where I combined scroll sawing and power carving using a dentist drill type carver. I've attached a photo of one of them here. It's from a pattern by Wildwood Designs. After cutting it out on the scroll saw it just seemed to need something else. So I carved the leaves and vines to shape and texture them, making the cross stand proud of the leaves and vines. The wood is mahogany, the finish is 3 coats of tung oil, and the leaves were colored with antique green Rub N Buff. The first of these (this one) was made in 1998, and family requests have resulted in 17 more since then. Charley

Not wanting to make my DeWalt 788 move around too easily, but not dig into the floor like these DeWalt saw stands want to do when pushed around, I installed pinball machine feet on my saw stand. I've also installed them on my other scroll saw stand, a Delta 40-650 Q3, my RBI Routershop, and several other machines in my shop. At one time I was a partner in an amusement machine business and found these feet to be ideal for many uses beside pinball machines. At less than $1.00 each they are a very low cost solution. The foot part of them is floating, so they can be pushed across slightly rough surfaces without digging in. I buy them from www.pbresource.com. Charley