TerryD

I was hoping someone could help me with downloading the Gimp 2.6 that Travis uses in his videos. I had my laptop crash and had to download Gimp again but with 2.10 and I am lost with this new program. I have looked at some sites but being computer illiterate I am not sure if I should go ahead with the downloads or not. Kind of makes me nervous, Does anyone know of a reliable website that I can safely download older programs. Any help would be appreciated. TerryD

I have cut quite a few ( probably 8 or more ) of Mikes patterns over the years and loved doing all of them. They are a bit of a challenge but very rewarding once finished. I would recommend his patterns to anyone who likes to cut detailed fretwork patterns.

I had a saw similar to this when I first started scrolling and found it is very difficult to set up a spiral properly. The best piece of advice I can give you is to lightly clamp the blade to the top blade holder first. Make sure the top of your blade is level with the top of the allan screw in your holder. Now tighten your blade to the holder at the bottom. It will twist out of shape but if it is aligned properly it shouldn't matter too much. Remove your blade from the top holder and it should be fine to retighten several times because there is no excess blade sticking out from the top to twist. Hope this helps ( and makes sense ). Terry

Hey Jim. Big GOT fan here. I have a suggestion for an inside pattern on a round coaster. A Dire Wolf. If you're not a fan, it is on everything related to the Stark Family on the show. (Coat of Arms, Standard etc..) Should be lots of patterns out there to pick from and your nephew would love it. Terry

Sam I have been scrolling for about 20 years and still have this problem at times. I mainly use the 2/0 or 3/0 spiral which is harder to clamp because the blades continue to turn towards the top. If all the great advice given here does not work for you and you are still having issues you may want to use a small pair of needle nose pliers to straighten the blades as they start to bend. It will not fix your problem but it will extend the blade life. A #1 blade is still pretty small and it doesn't take much for them to start to bend. Terry

Hi Dick Thanks for trying to help out. I followed your instructions but it didn't change anything on my end. I guess it must be the way Inkscape downloaded to my laptop. I haven't had a chance to uninstall and download again but I'm hoping that will help. Thanks again. Terry

Hey Chris, Excellent advice here so far but before you purchase a saw to cut your 30" blanks you must consider the arm length (or throat capacity -- from your blade to the back of your saw ). I use a Dewalt 788 which has roughly 20" of workable space. That is to say if I drilled a hole in the very centre of a 30" blank I could only cut 5 " in a forward direction before my blank would hit the back of my saw. (15 " of blank to centre plus 5 " of pattern ). This would give me about 10" of cut pattern in the middle of a 30 " blank. Such a waste. You could get around this by using spiral blades but i doubt these would work on such a thick piece of wood as being suggested. The Hegner Ex 30 or something along those lines would meet your requirements because of the longer arm length. You said you were new to scrolling so I wanted to make sure you understood how cutting larger pieces works. I look forward to seeing your finished pieces in the future. Terry

Travis I think it must be my laptop. I have been having some issues with Inkscape from the very beginning. My middle menu bar, for instance (Create New Document, Open Existing Document, etc.....) is on the side of my screen from top right to bottom right. There are two small arrows at the bottom of the column that I have to click to get access to Ungroup, Fill and Stroke , Text and Font etc ... I tried clicking and holding the bar to try to move it but it doesn't want to work. I uninstalled the program once and reinstalled it but the same thing happened. Oh well. I'll try again later. I can always send to my tower and print from there so it's no big deal for me . As long as your print came out fine is all that matters for when I share the finished pattern. Thanks again for your help and great job with the tutorials. Very much appreciated. Terry

Hi Travis I converted to a PDF as you suggested with the same result. I will attach the original first which may show a perfectly good pattern where the shading only comes into play when I print. The second is the PDF which should give you an idea as to what is happening to the print. Thanks for the help by the way. Terry goalie sticks.svg Print goalie stick print check 1.pdf

I use 1/8 BB for all my portrait style projects but I think it depends on the pattern as well. If there is a lot of fretwork cuts in it the project 1/8" is the way to go. If not you may want to add some depth with the 1/4". I do my cuttings a little different than most I guess. I stack cut 3 - 1/8" BB but I also sandwich 5 pieces of card stock in between the top and middle layer and 5 pieces of card stock between the middle and bottom layer. The 10 extra pieces are pretty close to 1/8" thick. So instead of having 3 or 4 finished projects you have 13. You can sell the card stock cuttings for 1/2 the price as the wooden ones or if you are like me, give these to family, friends, or fundraisers and still keep your wooden ones to sell at a higher price. I normally use wedding invitation stock because of it's lighter color but you can get bold and use silver, black, grey or whatever color you want to experiment with. Just a thought. Terry

I've identified where my print troubles start but I have no idea how to correct it. When I create a small rectangle, let's say 1/4" x 3" and I click on it twice it allows me to use the arrow keys to turn it to a 45 degree angle. When I do this there are horizontal and vertical dotted lines that show the outside edges and the highest and lowest of my rectangle. This is normal but in my case It is the area inside these lines that are printing black. Any items that I have created within that area will print fine ( as long as it is not black ). Is there a setting somewhere that I can change this. This only happens with my laptop. My regular tower computer works fine but it is very old and slow. I prefer to use the laptop when working with Inkscape. Anyone have any ideas ?? Thanks Terry

That's a good idea Jerry. I'll give it a try. And if for some reason I still have issues I can start over again only this time print as I go to see exactly where the black rectangles start to come into play. It may be hard on the paper and ink but it would be nice to know the origin of the problem. Thanks again Terry

This is my first post for help in pattern making section but before I do I would like to thank Travis for all his work and effort in making the tutorial videos. Without them I would never have tried to use Inkscape. So to Travis and others who help along the way I Thank You. Very much appreciated. I am trying to create a pattern using 3 different styles. Word art, A small design I did using Gimp ( something like clip art ) and a small pattern design created in Inkscape. The problem I have is with the Inkscape design. My 12 year old son is a hockey goalie so I created crossed over goalie sticks to go in each lower corner of the pattern. I did this by using 4 rectangles and adjusting them to the shape of a goalie stick. I went path - union and welded them together. I created a small rectangle over the flat part of the blade to simulate hockey tape. Went path - difference. I duplicated this image and went object -- flip horizontal. I joined these 2 pieces together with object -- union. I duplicated this image so now I have 2 sets of goalie sticks. 1 for each lower corner. Everything looked great. When I printed the completed pattern there are black rectangles where the sticks should be. I changed the color of the sticks from black to grey. The sticks are now visible but still surrounded by the black rectangle. I did the same process to a new page with nothing else on it with the same result. What did I do wrong? Sorry for the long post but I wasn't sure if you needed all the process to help me. Thanks Terry

Hi Edward, I think I can help you out. Firstly I checked my Dewalt and with my thumb screw tightened it is horizontal to the table. If the set screw opposite your thumb screw is off by a 1/4 turn it will point the long end down interfering with your cut. Try backing off the set screw a little so that your thumb screw can tighten horizontally. I noticed the set screw wasn't fitting properly when I had to purchase a new blade holder. As long as it doesn't damage your blades you should be good to go. By the way my saw measures 2 -1/8" from table top to the bottom of the blade holder at its lowest point. ( just in case this means something as well ). Terry

My first saw was similar to what you have. It was very frustrating to say the least. After a while you get used to it but you have to stay with it. I had more trouble with only 2 speeds than I did with anything else. In the meantime there are some really nice patterns out there that you can do with the pinned blade. You don't need to get into highly detailed fretwork to have fun with scrolling. The size of the pilot hole you make in the waste area for your blade to go through can determine how detailed your fretwork can be. The more detailed fretwork can come later when you upgrade. And when you do upgrade plan ahead. Go for the higher quality saw because you will eventually want one anyway. Save a little longer to make your purchase. My DeWalt should have been my second saw not my third. Congradulations on your soon to be new addition.