crupiea

I dont prime. I just cheapo acrylics thinned with water. I just do a number of layers. nice part is it dries pretty fast so can do multiple layers in a short period of time.

I thought this would work too but I ended up with just a regular picture with a scroll saw incorporated in to it. I am sure some people who do this stuff all the time can figure out the prompts and such but i am not that guy.

All of my work is done with 1/8" baltic birch and 2/0 jewelers blades. The reason I use these is they have like 50 teeth per inch or some crazy thing like that. I have used FD and pegas 2/0 blades in the past and they are great but have their limitations. Mainly, they are very flexible and hard to control so doing very tight cuts is difficult. Plus the lack of teeth makes blow outs are tear outs a common thing. The jewelers blades are stiff , thin, combined with lots of teeth make fort great tiny inside cuts flawlessly. Talking in the mm scale cuts. Sounds great but the downside is the lack of reverse teeth. Just like any saw without reverse teeth, they will make an absolute mess on the backside of the wood. This leads to blow outs, tear outs and lots of repeated work to fix the mess. What I used to use was another piece of 1/8" baltic birch as a backer as I had a specialty yard near me where I could get endless amounts of it for a reasonable price. Times have of course changed plus I moved so no longer have access to it so needed a new backer source. this is how the giant popsicle sticks come in to play. They sell them in the craft section of walmart for a few bucks for a big pack. They are 1/16" sp perfect backer material. Just lightly spray them with 77 and let it become super light to the touch. hardly tacky at all. Thats the trick. it should be just the slightest bit of tacky, just barely enough to stick. Put them on the back of the piece and thats it. Too much tackiness and you wont be able to remove the popsicle sticks so its really use the lightest spray of super 77 and let it dry to barely tacky. Just finished a very intricate piece, no tear outs and it looks great.

Just get the cheapest one walmart sells. and some clear tubing. I put the end of a ball pen into one end of the tube to make it more directional and taped the tube alongside the regular tubing. Works great and is constantly on when I saw instead of only blowing air like the bellows do. Total cost should be about $10.

Going to move to Kingman AZ area. been looking for some time. Currently in an apartment an dthey are needing to renovate the ceiling or something like that so have to move out anyway so might as well make the move now.

Going to be moving in a couple months and have been slowly getting rid of stuff and packing. I had my saw set up in my dining area but now need that area for storing boxes. sadly had to make the choice to store the saw for now. the space is more important right now. Once I get moved though i will have a big garage and all so should be able to get right back in the game.

I would insert it into excel. Then you can size it any size you want big or small and it will print it properly. if you dont have excel any spreadsheet program will work. no need to play around with printer settings and all that hassle.

I am not a big stack cutting guy but when i do i use blue painters tape around the edges.

I just make mine out of bb. One big piece. Make it about an inch and a half wide or so and cut out the inside and outside. Like a big flimsy square or rectangle or whatever. Can easily make round frames like this as well. tried piecing parts together and gluing and all that and it was just too much hassle. This way i am still left with a black to use for another project. I then just paint it black and glue it to the backer.

You should have that knocked out in a couple days.

I notice that the larger the piece gets, the less control I have plus the less intricate the designs can be. Gets less accurate the bigger it is. What I do to counter that is to cut the piece out of something smaller and attach it to the larger backing piece.

Sounds like a fun idea. When i want a bigger pattern I just insert the pic into an excel document and make it the size i want. It will print across multiple pages. Have to cut and tape them together but not the end of the world. Not the best solution but it works.

If you are using acrylic and a brush, just paint it all first with flat white. That will give it a uniform background so you dont need to worry about the grain and all that showing through. What i had the best results with was the cheapo airbrush from harbor freight. You need a compressor though so its not worth it if you dont have one. The airbrush thing was like under $20 or so. It laid down a very nice coat of acrylic. Just used craft stuff from walmart and thinned it with some water.

Looks great. Dont worry too much about the time as long as you are enjoying it. I do all of my stuff on the very slowest setting the saw can go. Takes longer I guess but i dont care as its relaxing and I can have better control. I actually wish my scroll saws would go even slower, like a sewing machine where you can turn the wheel by hand to get just a single stitch at a time.

My technique is to just not have any friends. lol