FrankEV

Very well cut! Doing a great job on the new Pegas saw. Me, I do not like cutting block font like that.

Very well done.

Great cutting.

Danj84 above said it all very well. To me using spirals is like moving a puck around on a Wigi board. Both hands move the work around and your eyes (and brain) controls your hands so the blade follows the cut line. You can't "think" follow the line. After a lot of practice, you just do it trying not to stop along the way. Restarting can often mean a little (sometimes big) wiggle will ocur. I personally find I don't care to cut straight up/away or down/toward me. I'm almost always following the line off a little from true vertical. The shape of the cut out and its location in the panel will dictate which direction you cut. For me, I always try to cut in a counterclockwise route around to cut. My brain dosn't like going clockwise for some reason. And like Danj84, I try to cut on the waste side of the line. It is easy to trim/shave off some material to get to the line, but as you know you can't put material back.

I have no argument about the cutting, it is well done, and if that is your/anyones belief, OK. I'm just not sure it is appropriate to envoke it in this kind of forum...kinda like politics..to me a no no. However I must state something about the words used in the quote. I firmly believe there is NO SUCH THING as "Right" (or "Wrong") in a pure morality sense. Right and wrong are only concepts defined by laws (supposedly for the good of the people) and/or long standing and varying cultures from all over. All of which the people have created in an attempt to define what their beiefs teach. I do believe there is a thing called "Good", which I can accept as a morality virtue. Its counterpart, often reffered to as "Evil" is simply the absence of Good. Sort of like Heat and Cold. We know sicentifically that there is really no such thing as cold as it is only the absence of Heat. This may be a subject for discussion at another place and time...but probably not on this site! With that being said, I - only me - do not find the quote to have any basis in truism or fact and my belief has abolutely nothing to do with religion or politics. Please, lets keep this forum strickly about Scroll work!

Lower the tension and run at a slower speed. On my Pegas, the speed knob tends to increase the speed all by itself over a couple hours of cutting. If I'm not paying attention, as the speed increases, the blads will start to break just like what yours is doing. Too much tension is also a major culpret. Back it down so you only need a light press on the lever to lock the tension after clamping the blade. I tend to use small blades and if I don't kink the blade when threading, they will last a long time. But when the speed increases or the tension is too high, they will break after only a few cuts.

You are correct about the fuzzies. I have learned to ignore them. Some amount of clean up of fuzzies is necessary on all cuts. I have a three step process for removing the fuzzies. First I use a sanding mop (the one from the UK that foxfold recommended) to remove all the very loose stuff from the back of the panel. I will do this often during the cutting to prevent a build up under the panel that interferes with smooth sliding of the panel on the table. Second, after the cut is done and the sanding mop has done its job, I actually use my palm sander with 220 grit paper on the back side. Yeah, have to be careful with delicate areas, but I really haven't had much problem as long a I keep the sander flat. This removes a lot of the fuzzies and only takes a few seconds. Third, to get any and all fuzzies left behind, especially in those small/narrow/sharp pointy areas, I use a butane torch. Poof - as long as you are quick and carefull - they are gone. Use the spirals more, and soon you won't want to use a regular blade much any more. I only go to a #3 or #5 Pegas mgt R blade when I cut the long straight/oval/circular lines of a frame area that is part of the pattern.

Very, very nice. Looking at the Pic, looks like all solid Walnut.. is that correct?. I just ordered some 1/4 and 1/8 material in Walnut and Maple and can appreciate the cost of the wood that you put into that clock plus the movement. What is you plans for it? Is it a keeper or is it on the market?

You can make a cupped board flat with a planer if you do it correctly and if it is not toooo severely cupped. You need to only take a very ligt cut with each pass throught the planer flipping the board betwee each pass. It does not remove the cup, it will simply thin the board to a uniform thickness dimension. Since the board is already cupped it will not cup any more. I've used this method to make flat many rough sawn boards that are cupped right out of the drying kiln. Most often you can get true 3/4" thick boards from rough sawn 5/4, or sometimes 4/4, material. Yep...lots of waste. This method is what commercial lumber mills use, only their planers are 2 sided and it only requires one pass to reach the desired milled thickness.

Learning to use spiral blades is intiminating to most, but once they are mastered they become the "go-to" blade for most work. I have found that even on projects that would be easily completed with a standard type blade I will use a spiral. With me it ws all about not looking on adjscent parrallel cut areas. There is a tendency for the blade to go where you look and it would always go toward the adjacent cut area. Now I can ignore the adjacent cut area and the blade will stay on the line I'm cutting. Since I do most of my work on 1/8" thick ply of various types, I find I even tend to predomintly use the very small #2/0 spiral blades so I can get nice pointy/sharp intersections and corners.

When this topic was rasied a while back in another post, I was able to order a 6 pack of the 16.75 oz 3M Super 77 Multi-Purpose Sparay Adheasive -77-24 at somewhere around $7 a can. I can't find where I ordered it from but in looking I found you can order it from Home Depot for $10.27/can. Amazon price is over $23/can and you must buy two. Here is a PDF of the HD page: 3M 16.75 oz. Super 77 Multi-Purpose Spray Adhesive-77-24 - The Home Depot.pdf

Extreamly nice cutting of the font.

Nicely done! But oh, aren't those whiskers a bugger to do? H.B. has some very interesting and unique patterns!

Poplar is a great relatively inexpensive wood that is OK for scroling, but in itself it is not a very pretty wood. The wood comes in all sorts of colors as part of the grain. Yelow/green/brown/purple can often be seen in the same board. The colors will fade and I don't think any finish will prevent it from hapening, but yopu can try. I might suggest clear lacquer. The lacquer will not restrict scrolling in any way, and is eaily sanded after cutting and hten recoated with lacquer with out being noticable. Althougnj I have cut a fretwork piece from poplar I mainly use it for making frames. Polar takes paint very well and will take stain OK but the grain can be a big detraction. That is why I search for pieces that have very little grain color. I feel very lucky when I find one board out of 10 or more that has very little colored grain.

You are correct...dont know him. However, the likeness in the cutting is fabulous. Your rouges gallery is ever expanding!

Very nice spiral blade cutting.

sometimes taking a break and doing a fun cut is jut what we all need occasionally. Nice clean cutting.

Great cutting. Love Eagles, as you know. Howevewr, as I've said this before, I'm not a fan of the torch work, but to each his own, as they say. For me I would have made the black backer maybe a 15" x 12" rectangle and mounted it in a frame as a true wall hanging. Don't consider these critizisms, they are just my thoughts.

Marvelous cutting. Now that it is completed do you feel the choice of the Zebra wood was a good one? Just my personal opinion, but I'm not a fan of heavily grained wood for any portraits unless the grain works to enhance the image. Also, the choice of Tung Oil also darkend the piece a lot. I like the uncoated version a lot better. Again, IMHO, a clear Wipe- On Poly or Lacquer may have been a better choice.

For dressing up fretwork and fontwork, I found that a good set of rotary carving tools that fit the Dremel Tool are the most handy. I've tried small files, sanding sicks and more, but none fit into this tight places that need some help. The rotary carving tools come in a veriety of shapes and the very small slightly tapered bit gets into all those very small tight places. The larger cylindar shaped bit is great for straightening those long straigt or long smooth curved cuts where the saw blade may have gone a little astray. So, whatever you planned to use the rasps for, the carving bits would work better and quicker.

You have no lack of talent in your scroll saw work. Each are just great. These should have been addded into Travis Post!

This is another conversion of a ZM Creations Illustration I made into a Scroll Saw pattern. Just had to add another piece to my "birds". The cut panel is 5/32 x 11 x 15 Maple solid core ply affixed to a hand painted 1/4” x 11 x 15” BB ply backer. All cutting was completed with Pegas #0 Spiral blades. The backer was given a coat of Acrylic Gesso and then hand painted with Artist Acrylic paints. I used additional copies of the pattern that I cut out with an Exacto knife to help locate the areas to be painted the various colors. Of course as always, the assembled panel was finished with multiple coats of Clear Gloss Lacquer. My usual frame width is 1 3/4, but, because I messed up a cut and did not want to waste the wood, this frame is only 1 1/4” wide Poplar stained with Minwax Ebony and finish with multiple coats of Minwax Satin Wipe-On Poly. BTW, they are Parrots, if you had not figured that out!

I'm thinking the only thing to use is an epoxy to fill the void. It may mean yu have to re-cut the area that you fill.

Beautiful wood. Also looking forward to see what you do with it. I don't own a planer either, but that is about to change. I have a birthday comming up and between my Lady and Daughter they asked what I wanted and I told them to get me the small Craftsman Planer that Lowes sells. It is a small bench top planer that I really do not have room for a permanent setup in my shop but will come up with a way of using it on a portable stand when needed. JUst have to find a suitabl place to store it in the meantime. I have access to Rough sawn lumber of various kinds but the cost to have it planed is high. I'll only be doing small pieces mainly to reduce rough sawn 3/4" material down to 1/2" or 1/4" or 1" down to 3/4" for frames, so I'm hoping the Craftsman unit will do the job.

Well done on all. very nice job on the font and Oscar should be a happy cat!