Iguanadon

Steve Good had hinted towards wanting to see a video of my setup so I took several short videos both Saturday and Sunday and put them together into a single video of 10 minutes. I just emailed the link to him. We'll see if he likes it enough to post it on his site as he did the others. https://youtu.be/VJyeaYMO0XM Iggy

Hey Gang, Just a quick update for ya if you're interested. I arrived at the mega event at precisely 5am this morning to setup. Twas a long day. The weather was perfect, the crowd was large, people were happy to have a nice day to roam around. Remember the question in my mind was a larger crowd or a huge number of vendors going to impact my sales compared to a similar event in the same town I did back in April. The answer turns out to be that having 350 vendors compared to 170 vendors means that the pool of spending money being spread out to more vendors is what matters. In April, at the similar event, I sold 96 puzzles. Today, I sold almost the exact same, 93 puzzles. No complaints at all, but I had a target of 150 for today. Tomorrow will be weak, the 2nd day of 2 day events always is, and it's only 4 1/2 hours in duration tomorrow compared to 9 hours today. If I sell 40 tomorrow I'll be happy. The good news is the folks next to me that were selling really cheap yard art items, sold out and they won't be there tomorrow, so I can set my booth up like I do at the farmers market with my tables around the perimeter of the tent so people don't have to step inside. I hope everyone is having a good weekend. Talk with ya soon. Iggy

I will... I'm not holding my breath. If I wasn't already heading to Raleigh anyway, I wouldn't even bother driving the 150 miles to do this. That's the closest service center to me.

Hey Brian, congrats on the new Hawk order. Funny, I have my newest Dewalt in my car to take with me today to Raleigh to the service center to get it looked at under warranty. We'll see how that goes. I'm glad you still decided to go with the Hawk even after following my buying process. The saw, so far, runs great now that all has been figured out. The customer service at Bushton Manufacturing is solid and they'll do whatever it takes to make things right. I hope you get to simply plug yours in and start using it when it arrives.

Man, I wish I could cut and sell puzzles full time, believe me I've crunched the numbers and it just isn't possible. My current employer is foolish enough to pay me way too much money to even consider walking away. If they boot me out the door though, then I might give it a try. :-)

Happy to help Ralph, you're very welcome.

LOL, I haven't forgotten, I'm hoping you're right! I always start doubting how a show will go for me and now I just hope I sell 50. :-)

Thanks everyone... it was a very pleasant surprise to see Steve's article and kind words. I hope to make a video of my booth setup Saturday and will have it to share by the end of next week. FYI - Big event this weekend, then I'm supposed to hop on a plane early Monday morning for Austin TX for 3 days but hurricane Harvey may alter those plans... I hope...

I wasn't planning on cutting any more this week, but I received 3 custom orders this past Saturday and Harvey got them to me quickly and it gave me an opportunity to do a real test of the Hawk. First 2 puzzles cut out of poplar. Meet Duke and Luky (yes, Luky, pronounced 'Lukee"). I haven't oiled them yet as I have one more to cut either this evening or in the morning. I also tested the new Pegas Modified Geometry blades in a size #3... they are thin... thinner than the Olson Mach Speed #3 I usually use. Overall, a grade of A+ so far. The saw and the blades did great. It's definitely slower cutting than I'm used to, but actually, I kind of like it, it's more relaxing and I hope to stick to a schedule of 5 puzzles per day as opposed to the 10 a day I've been doing the past 3 months in advance of my event this weekend. The saw ran well, it turns sharper than the DeWalt by far and I feel very comfortable using it. Bottom feeding and blade changing are easier than I expected and I'm almost as quick with it as I was with the DeWalt. The Pegas blades are fantastic. I think the #3 wears out a little faster being thinner, and that's OK, I just have to be sure to swap them out rather than try to force them. I'm very happy right now. Iggy

Love the sun.

I am truly flattered by Steve's article. He was way too kind. Thanks for mentioning it RJ. http://scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com/

OK, now I'm beyond honored... I emailed Steve yesterday thanking him for sharing my videos and since he'd mentioned wondering what my booth setup looked like, I included some pictures... Well he wrote an amazing little article on his site this morning... and amazingly he was right about everything he guessed and assumed... I do take blades with me to show people, I do have a stockpile of pre-wrapped duplicates behind the tables, etc, etc. I'll be making a video Saturday morning as I setup for my weekend event. http://scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com/

You certainly could if you want to and simply not cut out the puzzle pieces. I know some folks that have done that.

You win for comment of the day. Hilarious!

I just tried this online tool and it worked. Apparently it will only do 1 or 2 pages at a time unless you sign up and pay, but if you're doing single page pdf's, you might be able to keep using it. :-) https://docs.zone/pdf-to-jpg

I told Mrs. Iggy about it this morning and she chuckled... "Scroll saw blog?" I said "Everyone starts small... you can call me Iggy Kardashian." She refused.

Hi JB, it came from a magazine I believe originally. I had a friend send it to me when I saw the one he cut. Here it is. Santa.pdf

Very nicely done.

Thanks Jerry, not bad for my first attempts. I emailed Steve thanking him for sharing them. I will be making another video Saturday morning as I'm setting up my booth for the weekend event.

I had created a couple of videos to share here and on a Facebook group page I'm part of and I knew I was getting hundreds of views, but suddenly I had people commenting, emailing and folks subscribing to my YouTube page... now I know where some of the interest came from... Steve Good featured me on his site. I had no idea. http://scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com/ Scroll down a little bit, right after his videos of the midwest scroll show. Now I feel compelled to make some more videos. LOL

Check this out... it's been mid and upper 90's up there for weeks... and the puzzle gods are shining on me for this weekend. ;-)

Thanks Rob and I just sent you an email as well. I don't have any of these on hand yet since I'm just now offering them. I've left Harvey a voicemail asking him to send me the ones you ordered. He'll drop them in the mail to me and I'll get them to you via email.

Quit crying wolf Duke. Nice work.

I hate to hear that, I'm a big fan of Olson blades. I haven't ordered any though within the past 2 or 3 months. Which style are you using? I use Mach Speed.

Here they are... 700 puzzles ready to load up in a couple of days for the big weekend event... I don't know whether to expect to sell 250 or just 50... But it'll be a wild one. And I'll get to meet Orangeman.