Harry Barton

Or RAF roundels, and it's a Dakota! I flew in one in the 1970s when I was in the air cadets (from RAF Waddington, possibly, during the annual camp trip). Luckily, we didn't have to jump out.

I'm not keen on snow and fortunately we don't get much here in the sheltered midlands of England. If snow fell on me in October I'd move house! We occasionally have minor earth tremors (usually now blamed on Fracking). My son's in Toronto right now, so hopefully the weather's not too bad there. Anyway, glad no-one was hurt, and maybe some of that maple will find its way into your hands.

Thanks! Umbra Normal is a font designed to look like a drop shadow. It's possible to achieve the effect with pretty much any font, in Word, Publisher etc. - no fancy program needed: just choose a font, type your word, then type it again (or copy & paste), change the second one to any different colour and lay it on top of the first one, moving it around to until the desired shadow effect is produced, then change the second word's colour to white, and print it out.

Thank you. The letters don't really exist, as I made a drop shadow, which is what I cut out, producing an optical illusion.

Here's a trial version of a sign for my house: I used a piece of scrap pine, and with the thinnest line less than 1mm, will need to make the design larger as it was really difficult to get the blade through the hole. As it is, we don't currently have a house sign, so this one is propped up in a window andit doesn't look too bad! I'll probably use birch ply for the proper sign, and shape the outline somehow.

Very much off topic, but I'll add my experience and may even get back onto the topic: as a boy I played piano by ear, then asked for lessons, which I hated. That put me off playing (my mum said I didn't touch the instrument for eighteen months), but I did then get into playing guitar, again, by ear. I still don't read music but as we had an electric piano in the house and I could bash out some tunes, I took lessons a couple of years ago, and found that playing from the sheet music was like playing a completely different instrument, and I didn't really get into it. Back to guitars: I do have a couple of clip-on tuners, so I'll see what pitch my scroll saw blades produce, and how well they cut at those tensions, to see if it's possible to set an optimum tension by this method. Regarding tight angles: if there's waste material (i.e. not cutting a single thin line), then I'll often back up into the waste and not attempt a turn, but come back into the corner from the other line. If the waste is outside the angle, then I'll loop around.

I've just visited www.scrollsawart4u.weebly.com and am very impressed by what I saw! When I eventually make time to use my scroll saw for its intended purpose (rather than DIY projects, where it's so handy), I'll hope to produce work of that standard. My son lives in Toronto and has visited Niagara Falls a few times. Assuming it's not already been done, that might be a good scene for scroll saw art.

Hi Gary; nice cat!

Lovely work. I presume their surname is Bryant, in which case there should be no apostrophe. Can you peel that piece off and refinish the wood?

I've fitted laminate flooring, which is awful stuff, glue-together engineered wood flooring, which I like, and click-together engineered wood flooring, which I like even more. I do have some leftovers from a recent project. It's 5/8" thick, with only the top 1/8" real oak, and I'm not sure what I'll be able to produce with the scroll saw (other than firewood).

I wondered what underlayment was too! Floors in the UK are not normally laid on top of thin plywood. Where plywood is used for sub-floor support, it will be much thicker; and where thinner material is used (e.g.under click-together flooring), it'll be 5mm soft fibre panels or 2mm foam off a roll. None of which information helps us to find cheap, usable scrolling materials over here!

Hi Barry, I'm saving up for some wood myself and should have enough for a small piece in a year or so!

Hello Clive, and welcome from Shropshire.

When I got my scroll saw a few weeks ago, I imagined that by now I'd be turning out interesting, artistic pieces of a standard that would demonstrate my natural ability and flair... Anyway, it hasn't quite turned out like that! Not only is scrolling not as easy as it looks, life's got in the way and I've not had much time to devote to it. I have had to do a few DIY jobs around the house. For these, I've used my saw whenever possible, and it's a superb addition to the workshop. For instance, today I needed to cut some pieces of pine to fill gaps in a door frame, where locks had been moved. I cut a 5/16" thick piece to 1" x 10", and then ripped that along its length, to make two pieces each about 1/8" thick. There is no way I could have done that with any other tool in my possession, and it was quick, fairly easy and after a bit of sanding and planing, reasonably accurate.

I presume it could be done with a CAD program with 3d capability, by drawing the object and then taking sections at intervals from back to front (or side to side) and exporting them as 2d drawings. I haven't used CAD for years, mind, so I have no idea which program would be best for this.