FrankEV

Well done. Spirals do take some (more than some...more like a lot of) practice. However, for portraits like this, once mastered, you won't go back to straight blades.

Great job. As a ex volly on LI,NY I know for sure that what ever Fire Fighter winds up with it will display it in pride.

That is doable, but I wanted the new tank type ink supply. No mess no fuss.

The lizard and bat would be islands that would need to be glued back in. Otherwise this would be straight forward cutting by just cutting out the black. Since it is suggested that it be shared, I'm doubting it would be a Copywrited image that should not be copied. I would think it would make a nice piece with maybe the same statement: "How many animals do you see?" included on the panel. Not realy art, but would definately be a conversation starter...just what this website was suggesting. A mancave piece for sure!

As many others said. Great pattern and thanks for sharing. I'm in the process of getting my family gifts made including four different Santa Faces. I'm on the last one right now. However, now It will be five.

JFYI: As many of us do, we buy BB ply panels that are 12” x 24”, or in my case I also purchase the Solid Core Plywood that I get from HD that is 12” x 19 ¼”. Although one of the standard Photo sizes is 11” x 14”, which I frequently use, the extra inch that is trimmed off is a waste (but they do make good stir sticks). I have had more than one occasion when I would have liked to make my cut panel the full 12” wide, but the largest pattern I could print was 11” wide. Previously, my Inkjet printer was an Epson that was capable of printing 11” x 17” paper as well as the other standard letter and legal sizes. It was a quality printer but as we know, Inkjet cartridges are quite expensive and doing many patterns was using up lots of ink. And, If I wanted to do something wider than 11” I would have to make split patterns that I would have to tape together. So, I recently opted to purchase one of the new printers that uses ink tanks that are supposed to last a long time, and thereby reducing the per copy cost significantly. My research led me to buy another Epson, this time a Model ET-16600, which has the added capability of being able to print up to the Super B size, 13” x 19” sheets. Works nice for the Architectural B size 12” x 18” listed in Inkscape. This printer is quite expensive, but compared to online and other sellers, I got a very good deal at my local Office Depot, including an extended warranty. However, I was not able to find 13” x 19” paper at my local Office Depot and wound up having to order it on-line. I found a 500-sheet ream of Hammermill Premium 28# copy paper (a bit heavier than standard copy paper) for about $33 on Amazon with free Prime shipping. I believe, 500 sheets will last me a very, very long time. I had recently received the ream of paper and today was the first day I had the opportunity to make a large pattern. S. Good, just included a nice Christmas hanging plaque called “This House Believes in Santa” in today’s E-mail, that I was able to enlarge it to fit on a 12” wide panel. I wanted it larger as it will hang outside. Even though the large paper is a one-at-a-time feed, printing was a snap. Many years ago, when I worked in Engineering, we had printers that would take around 20 minutes or more to print out large drawing sheets. This printer prints the large sheets just about as quickly as a letter size. About ten seconds or so. Of course, this printer a full four function machine including: Copying, Printing, Faxing and Scanning.

Wonderful job. Great pattern. I love many hole patterns like this one. I have a series of bear patterns I'm planning for a themed project I'm planning for the comming months (after the holiday projects are complete) that, that work, would go very nicely with. I have not seen his name before. Is "Papa Dynamite" a member here and/or is he sharing/selling his patterns with/to others. You can PM me with any info if you like.

Well done! He was/is one of the all time greatest CW performers. I could listen to his songs all day long and often did.

I like. Great work. Maybe next a 4' or 5' tall version to stand next to a tree, and in color of course!

Very nice and interesting sculptured pieces. They look great!

Was refering to the groom!

What else is there to say. Lake all said...Great Job.

I kike that a lot. Great keepsake for the couple. However, he should have just bought her a house!!!!

Don't you just love it when an OP leaves you hanging like that. Scadi-eight peopele willing to help, but if you don't what the OP really was talking about, how can any one help?

As you know there are two tensioning devices. The knob at the back and the tensioning lever just above the blade (at least this how my Pegas is). With the tension knob set loose, if you clamp the blade top and botom and flip the lever, and then bring the tension up using the knob to where you just get that nice ping, That is your preset. Leave the knob alone from then on, but check it every now and then as they can chnge their position due to vibrations. After setting the tension, you must be careful to not over tighten the blade with the lever. If it feels thike it is too tight when you go to flip thy lever over the blade may not be in the clamp correctly. Clamping spiral blade in the clamp jaws is a little tricky because of the twist in the blade. I try to feel for the flat spot as I clamp. Not always easy to feel and you can catch the blade edge and when you flip the lever the tension may be toooo tight. Another indication of not proper clamping is getting the 'hockeystick' bend in the end of the blade. Both of these happenings shortens the blade life considerably. If you go back to my previous reply, I'm betting you re kinking the blade while threading.

1. Could be a bad batch of blades. 2. I'm gusessing that definately the tension is MUCH to tight. The blade should make a slight ping when plucked...it is not a banjo string. 3. You are pushing tooooooo hard with speed probably way too fast. Need to use a very light push to let the saw blade cut the work. High speed overheats the blade and they break much to soon. Thicker the wood the slower you need to move the piece. 4 You are trying to control the blade like a straight blade. You can't!!! Your hands must move the work to follow the line but in a more two axis like control. Both hands must work together to move the work. More like how you would trace something using a pencil and tracing paper, but using both hans. 5. And, if you kink a 2/0 spiral while threading, it will likely break within one or two cutting thereafter. ( I know, it happens to me too often...got to be very careful while threading the blade not to kink it.) Again, the thicker the wood the more opportunity to kink the blade while threading. Looking at the pic, I see the patten is not very intricate but it is somewhat repeitive. Lots of fine lines making the cutting boring but, IMHO, rather simple. Should not be a dificult piece to cut without breaking many blades. Your cutting of the lettering is real nice. You probably did not use the spirals and had no problems cutting them. Spirals do take a good amount of practice to get them to work for you. .

You did mean #2/0 blades, right? I can read the words, but can not really see the overall work in the pic. What is it? Can not see the crystals. Maybe show a pic of the pattern. Why was it so difficult to cut? Why did you need so many blades? Half inch thick BB ply should not have been dificult to cut, but I suspect a piece of solid wood woud have been a better choice for a table top standup piece. Just guessing, but it kinda sounds like your saw is not working correctly or you are not controling the workpiece properly. I think if you are looking for some help more info is needed. If you are looking for symphathy, you know where in the dictionary it can be found!

Thank you for the nice comments, but I'm not sure that "not being able to tell it is a scroll saw piece" is a good thing. It was not my intent, but as the colloration proceded, it did take on that almost a painting like appearence. My initial reason for colorization of my work was to make cuttings "POP" a little. No way was it the attemp to make imy work into paintings, which I think happened to some degree in this piece. Yes, the painting of this piece came out quite good, I don't feel it keeps the Scroll Saw cutting as the foremost work. And, NO, I did not consider an Oval Frame. As I said above, the painting like colorization process just happened so the rectangular panel was planned from the get go. Although I'm happy with this piece, I don't see myself pursuing this degree of colorization in future projects.

This great H. Botas pattern was slightly sized to fit a 13” W x 12” H panel. The cut panel is 5/32” thk. Solid Core ply affixed to a same size 1/4” thk BB ply backer. Both panels were hand painted with Artist Acrylic paints. The cut panel was cut using Pegas #0 Spiral blades. The assembled panel was finished with multiple coats of Delf Clear Gloss Lacquer. The Frame is a simple 1 3/4”wide Poplar, stained with Minwax Early American and protected with multiple coats of Minwax Clear Gloss Wipe-on Poly. Comments and critiques are always welcome.

Vert nice. I have two xmas projects ready to cut shortly. Might have to add some ornaments for our tree to the list.

Uing the "laughing" like button was not meant to be down putting...I just found your story to be funny! I know nothing about Padauk, so I can't be any help there other than to say Walnut or Mahogany might be acceptable contrasting alternatives, as we all know that they cut nicely. Still chuckleing about "2 hours and 8 blades" later only to have a "bad mistale"!!!!!!!!! Sorry.

When working with free stencil patterns or other images that can be found on-line, the image is not always made up of sharp clear deliniated line work. When I convert these types of images, I basically follow Brenda's procedure to convert a B&W pattern to a R/G pattern. However, the quality of the 'Trace Bitmap' fuction does not always duplicate the image acccutately if original line density varies or if there is any background clutter. The folloing is just for some FYI: In the 'Trace Bitmap' pop up box there are a number of setting that can be adjusted. There are 5 scan types. I've only had sucess using the first two. Brightness Cutoff works the best for most but I have done a few using Edge Detection. Then there is the threshold settiings for these that can be rasised or lowered to give varying results in the duplication. These 'Threshold' settings can help reduce or even eliminate background clutter and/or improve line detail. I'm not sure what some of the other setting do... yet! After converting to R/G and setting the line thickness, I will usually resize the pattern to suit the size of board I want to cut. I fit a pattern to a board, not the board to the pattern. I mainly do this using the "X', 'Y', 'W' & 'H' values in the top tool bar. This allows me to center the pattern and leave the appropriate balanced amount of "white space" around the pattern. I most often find it is necesssary to edit the actual duplicated pattern using the 'Edit by nodes' comand to move/delete linework and the 'Draw Besier' command button to add/draw linework back in as needed. As, mentioned, the 'Erace' function is not very easy to work with so I don't. It is easier to delete/draw back than to erace. I'm still learning how to use the many Inkscape commands. There is a lot to learn if you want to edit. As and example, even if the 'Snap' command is not turned off, it can make editing difficult. Learning some of the many commands found under 'Edit' 'Layer', and 'Object' can get you started to modifing an image into a scrollerable pattern. The 'Undo' command under 'Edit' being the most important and most often used . Inkscape is not intuitive and takes a long time to learn. Experimentation and practice is how I have learned what I have so far.

Busy, many hole, delicate and intricate patterns is of no concern to me. Usualy mistakes can be hidden and/or fixed in one way or another. It is those patterns with long straight cut lines or patterns with lots of block fonts that I shy away from. I totally agree, a many hole pattern is no differen than a small number of hole pattern. Just cut one hole at a time. I tend to leave the largest cut out areas for last, but that is just me.

I do the conversion to Red/Grey using the "Trace Path" command often. Works great, but there are a few things to watch out for. It does not produce an EXACT copy of the original. It tends to treat pointy intersections as curves and will sometimes merge adjacent line work that are very close together on the original. For original JPG or other bit map files that are composed of crisp and sharp lines, it works great however, if the original file is at all fuzzy you can get a lot of inccurate duplication. I have found a lot of patterns offered free in jpg format must be copies of copies or have been produced form screenshots, thus loosing resolution. When patterns are purchased form an orinal pattern maker, or their seller, the patterns are usually electronic copeis of the original and good a clear. And, just a BTW, I make my red lines .005 inches and use a 20% Grey fill. I don't try to split the line, but will have the edge of the blade cut follow the line, one side or the other, depending on how close adjacent cut lines are. However my general rule is "Stay in the Grey" when the cut out area is grey.

Great Job. Yep, like Danny said, Walnut would have been a good wood choice in liew of the poplar.