Rolf

All of my wood is pre-sanded, if I do post sand it is with my sandflee and a gentle touch with a mac mop to soften edges.

Good luck with this new event, Are puzzles the only thing you make for sale?

Great design well cut!

You guys are too funny! Are the motors battery powered?

So you are cutting a stack of 1" paduk and 1/2" maple. That is a tough nut to start with. All good advice above. The wood needs to lay flat on the table or it will bind on you. What glue did you use? Some glues like carpenters glue will soften when heated and can be separated.

Please get better! We need to see progress pictures as you build your new shop.

Glad you are back in business, I hate when I get the run around. Tell me 6 weeks then do it 5, I am happy tell me 1 week do it 5, not happy. Companies like Dewalt depend on their local repair centers. If you are lucky you get one that has competent techs that are not intimidated by what they are repairing. They probably don't get too many Scroll saws. I am fortunate that, thanks to my upbringing and careers, I can fix or repair almost anything myself. If the parts are still available.

Clever, but I would need a step ladder to use any of the tools. The top of the table saw is at his shoulder.

I would always be happy to do a one on one with anyone interested. I have done lots of presentations at our club and at the Fox chapel Open houses. What a privilege that was. It is lots of fun and a real pleasure to meet so many people. I was mentored by the super talented folks in our club when I first started. Now it is my turn to "pay it forward".

LOL Dick, I couldn't do that in my neighbor hood. My 1/3 acre is big compared to my neighbors. The multi million properties are about 1/2 mile south. Stoney I would imagine the shop vac is noisy as heck. I have a Jet Vortec in my basement that is connected by 4" pipe with a drop and a gate at each machine. I use a remote to turn it on and off. With what you are thinking I would still collect the fine dust. It will get on every thing and if damp will make a tough mess to clean up. I would put it in a small enclosure out side. Some thing to consider depending on where you shop is. If I vented my Jet outside I will be pulling 1100CFM out of my basement. If that is not made up I create a negative pressure that will cause my furnace to dump CO back into my basement. I have already done that with an AC unit that was vented outside. Glad I had a good detector.

Sounds like an OOPs lesson learned.

No shop time for a while. Just started to gut a room upstairs down to the rafters and floor joists. New wiring, sub floor and floor, double mulled double hung window.sheet rock paint.

Looking forward to seeing them painted.

I have bought all of my movements from Sloans

I like the designs on that site. It is interesting that they use veneered mdf for some of their parts.

Spirithorse , interesting thought, If the blade could be turned 90 deg. We could cut very log pieces within a certain range without having to resort to spirals. There was a saw video a while back that showed a saw where you could turn the blade in any direction with one hand while cutting. Seemed very awkward to use. And yes discussion is good.

If you have the resources The Hawks are still a much better saw. and has new capabilities that your old Hawk did not. Top and Bottom feed Removable clamps , top and bottom Very easy adjustable front to back blade motion, Still the robust smooth saw that you remember. Just my opinion not a paid advertisement by Hawk I regret not buying the BM20 from them at the Fox Chapel open house a couple of years ago. I just don't have the room for two Hawks and didn't have any room in my Jeep as we were on a bit of a road trip at the time.

Gonzo Which one did you go for? Paul, I am really looking forward to this build. I am about to gut a room in the house down tot the floor joists and rafters, not much scrolling called for there.

The last thing I want to do when I do a presentation is spend my limited time fiddling with a saw. At our club we have a Hegner for presentations and I have taken my Old Delta SS-350 on the road a couple of times. Strangely I don't think we have any Dewalt saws in our club, When I joined in 2004 most were Hegners with one Hawk and the rest an assortment of Craftsman and Delta. We now have a couple of Excaliburs, We are getting away from the point of my Rant. I just wish that when the saws are being designed they take just a bit more time to make them user friendly. The main thing is that we keep creating the beautiful work presented on this forum with whatever saw is being used.

tension is determined by the blade size If they are popping immediately someplace other than at the clamp back off on the tension.

Jerry labeled that way or not I think that the Hawks would stand up to a production environment. It has for me. John T, I somewhat agree with you regarding say Hegner or Hawk building an high quality entry level saw. It would have to be small say 16". I would buy one in a heartbeat and if it would have been my first saw it wouldn't have been too long before I bought the 26 inch in addition. I would really like a "travel saw" that I could use when I do presentations. My big Hawk is 104 lbs. And getting hard for me to hump out of the basement. I am going to buy that lottery ticket now.

If it gets hot or cold enough in your work space to trash the blades, that would be the least of your problems. I would check your tension first, have you used any of these blades before or are they a just opened? It is possible that you have a bad batch. Where are they breaking?

Sycamore67, did not mean to bash engineers in general. As I have been blessed to work with some of the most brilliant in my 35 year career in building gadgets for high energy physics research. I know all too well how difficult it is to design and build a project at a reasonable price. But here is the thing, scroll saws have been around for a very long time. so the basics are there. And there have been excellent entry level saws under $200 with great clamps. Being a scroller and an engineer, I am sure you would approach the design with the intend to eliminate the most frustrating aspects of you current saw. That is what good engineers do. Pozgai designed after market clamp assemblies for a multitude of saws to make them easier to use. The best design was to add the Delta clamps to the Hawk saws. Unfortunately Delta stopped making the clamps. His modification cost me about $40 if I remember correctly. As is probably evident I am a big fan of the Hawk saws (2005 and newer not that familiar with the older ones) If they were to put all of their big saw features into a smaller saw and sell it for reasonable price they would have a real winner. Would it hurt the sales of the big 20 and 26 inch saws, I don't know. With today's CNC machining, making parts precisely and repeatedly is fast and cheap. But you need a good design. The upper arm on my Hawk has a spring at the back, when a blade breaks or you release the upper or lower clamp the arm rises automatically and stops moving. It is nice to not have that 1" of broken blade trying to eat my fingers. The bottom clamp is way out front under my table with nothing to get in the way of my fat fingers. If I win the mega lottery this weekend I will build that perfect saw and I will make it a HUGE success OOPS I forgot about all of the stupid safety crap that has to go on that will double the cost of the saw.

A bit of a rant. ​It appears that my wording of the topic has offended some, that certainly was not my intent. To those that I offended I apologize. A better choice may have been What is wrong with Scroll saw Designers. Specifically entry level. I just got an e-mail from Amazon with a whole list of different scrollsaws. There isn't a single (entry level) saw under $200 that has easy bottom clamp access. I don't get it. Evidently none of them have ever used scroll saw. Delta built saws for under $200 with a stand and some of the best and fastest clamps ever put on a saw over 15 years ago, You don't get into reasonable bottom clamp access until you get into the $300 dollar range. This drives me nuts (not far to go) I wonder how many people gave up on the hobby due to frustration with some of these saws. I know there are lots of folks that do great cutting with some of these saws, and yes they do cut. And I know it is not the tools that make the craftsman, but for me I want to scroll and cut wood when I have time and not spend it fiddling with blade clamps etc. My message to the Saw designers "KISS" End of rant

Another great clock designer is Brian Law in the UK http://www.woodenclocks.co.uk/ He designed two of the clocks that I have made for SSWWC magazine.He has a lot of tips on getting things running. It was a real privileged to work with him. Muzz I bought the full version of that just for fun and it helped me with the Chariot design.