Messages

16

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: Not sure what blade to use

« on: March 14, 2016, 02:11:08 pm »

Thanks for the suggestions  and...

My experience has been that patience & a practice are better teachers than most realize.

We seem to live in the instant world where practice is a relic of the past and there's always someone willing to sell us a way to bypass the very concept of practice and patience. None the less I still practice a lot. I recently built a nice little towel rack for my daughter and along the way I practiced chisel cuts over and over till I was completely confident with making the cuts needed. This of course left me with plenty of chunks of wood that are now for all intents and purposes pretty useless, but I can look at them and see how my own skills have evolved and improved. I have an entire box of scraps that can be seen as mistakes, but I prefer to look at them as a time line of learning.

17

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: A matter of practicality?

« on: March 14, 2016, 01:59:20 pm »

Good point there Roger.. I'm not going to stop going to the bathroom just because toilet paper goes up in price..
Kind of strange that yesterday as I was cutting through 1/2 inch oak it seemed to go faster as I went along. I'm fairly certain that the blade wasn't sharpening itself and I probably wasn't bending time on my own. Maybe I'm just bent which is something I won't expect much argument about..
Anyway, I got it done and it looks great .
I think one of my upcoming projects will be a movable stand for the scroll saw. Currently I have it mounted on the bench which is a bit too high to sit on the stool and just a bit too low to stand there on my feet all day. That way I can also plan for a place to keep blades and other scroll saw items separate and organized.  Did I say that I was going to get organized? If that actually occurs you can expect it to snow all day come August.. ;-)

18

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: Not sure what blade to use

« on: March 13, 2016, 01:48:19 pm »

I made the mistake of not getting my blades organized from the very beginning and instead just lumped them all together and as time has gone on I've acquired more and more small tools that get mixed up with the others.
I'm kind of in the process of getting reorganized and building a new work bench along with storage racks.. Just keeping my chisels organized and the sharp ends away from other things seems to be an after thought . I was originally geared up for working on cars and so on, but it's taking me awhile to realize that it's a completely different setup organizing for working with wood.. I've kind of lost the desire to spend all day turning nuts and bolts so keeping the grease off things is kind of important now days..

19

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: Gotta love Craigs List

« on: March 13, 2016, 01:33:14 pm »

The Dallas area does seem to breed bad drivers who regularly go off the road to avoid having to wait for the traffic ahead of them to move. They'll drive on the grass or whatever is there to get to the access road. I saw one guy try to drive across the railroad tracks just so he didn't have to wait the extra minute and of course he got stuck there. I guess lucky for him there wasn't a train coming..  Although Dallas doesn't have a monopoly on bad drivers they do seem to have more than their fair share of them.
Try to stay safe out there. Getting where you're trying to get to in one piece is more important than that extra minute of waiting in traffic..

20

General Scroll Saw Talk / A matter of practicality?

« on: March 13, 2016, 01:22:36 pm »

I'm wondering if anyone has tried to make a platform to raise the saws flat surface enough to make use of the rest of the blade after the blade becomes dull from use..
I'm not sure how to word this to make sense,  but it seems to me that only small section of the blade is used, perhaps an inch or so even though the blade still has another few inches of unused teeth. I had made a low tolerance surface with 8th inch plywood, but the thought of making it adjustable up and down to make use of the parts of the blade that typically isn't used would be useful.  Has anyone tried this and had success with it?
Maybe I'm just being cheap, but as far as I know scroll saw blades don't grow on trees.
Ant thoughts on this? 
Thanks..

21

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: Not sure what blade to use

« on: March 12, 2016, 01:38:26 pm »

Hard to say what the problem is, without knowing what blade is in the saw now.  Typically for wood that thick, I would probably choose something at least #3 or larger.  I've cut 1/2" thick oak with #2 reverse tooth blades.  It's slow, but not as slow as 10 minutes per inch.  Just about any sharp blade should cut faster than that.

I think I have it.. It's slow, but sure and straight which was another concern..Since basic math never was my strong suit I couldn't tell you what number I'm using..At least I'm not chopping my finger tips off like I nearly did with the table saw a few months ago.. I just need to take a breath and realize this isn't a race..

Thanks.

22

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: Gotta love Craigs List

« on: March 12, 2016, 01:24:04 pm »

Having lived in Texas for over 10 years in Dallas I can tell you that stupid drivers grow on trees there and it's harvest season year round..
I got my saw on CL as well though it was just a dremel, but the price was right.. Congratulations..

23

General Scroll Saw Talk / Not sure what blade to use

« on: March 12, 2016, 01:19:36 pm »

I've been away from the scroll saw awhile concentrating more on other things, but now I'm trying to cut through 1/2 inch oak and getting nowhere really quick.  I'm pretty patient, but so far the blades I've used with the Dremel 2 speed are taking about 10 minutes per inch. I'm not really even sure that I'm using the right blades and my collection of blades got knocked on the floor and scattered so telling one from the rest isn't real easy either.  I don't have the eagle eyes I once had.
Anyway..any suggestions?  I have quite a bit to cut here and would prefer it to not take me 32 years..

24

Brag Forum / Cell phone stand

« on: January 01, 2016, 06:06:22 pm »

It looks more like an artist easel than cell phone gear, but here it is.  The tiny parts are driving me crazy.. Not sure if it's age, too much coffee or both, but my hands shake doing these..
The hinges are slices of 3/8th oak dowel with 1/16th brass rod for pins.
I'm working on different hinges and trying to not have all the small parts glued together.
I'm working on an oak version a bit beefier..The newer version also uses brass nails instead of steel.

25

Brag Forum / Re: Dragon Intarsia

« on: January 01, 2016, 05:57:53 pm »

Very spiffy indeed! 
I read an ebook about inartia where the author uses either sawdust mixed with glue or perhaps it's putty. I don't remember, but uses it for a bit of a stained glass window effect.. Very nice stuff. He or she says that they don't have to worry as much about gaps.. The photos looked great, but I never saw it in person..

26

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: blade alignment

« on: December 16, 2015, 07:58:08 am »

Well duh...not 10 minutes after posting this it struck me like a toilet seat out of the sky blow to the head ..I had the blade clamped to the wrong side of the quick change adapter..  This problem has been plaguing me since day one.. I just love when something so simple seems invisible for so long. Geeeez!

27

General Scroll Saw Talk / Re: blade alignment

« on: December 15, 2015, 11:11:28 pm »

I have the same problem.  Everything cuts to the left. Table is square,  blades aligned,  a zero tolerance board and yet no matter what I try everything wants to wander to the left. I even thought of cutting off my left hand, but that would make going to the can difficult..not impossible, but difficult.  I think it's possible that the pinless blade adapter doesn't mesh with the lower adapter.  They're two different types. One is a dremel quick change adapter and the other their regular pinless adapter. I think that the quick change adapter is made for people who just want to cut things to the left.  I guess I'll call the woman with the sexy voice at dremel and order another adapter or maybe scroung around and find a chunk of steel to mill one with a better tolerance..

28

Introduce Yourself. / Re: New to scrolling

« on: November 23, 2015, 06:41:00 pm »

Hi Nancy and thanks. The hold down foot does seem to just get in the way and I did some small cutouts so the guard or plate just let the pieces fall away which is nice.  The adapters are new. I purchased them directly from dremel. I'm guessing I might have had the blade tension too tight, but I've only broken one very thin blade so far. I did discover that I had the lower adapter in the wrong place clamped under the two prongs so my handy dandy screwdriver solved that issue and the blades run true now instead of wobbling all over tarnation. I just wish the parts weren't so tiny with the undying desire to fly under all the junk I have all over the place. My girlfriend is borderline hoarder so it's a daily battle of moving her junk to replace it with my junk.

29

Introduce Yourself. / New to scrolling

« on: November 23, 2015, 10:34:23 am »

Good morning  (assuming it's morning for you) . I'm new to scrolling myself and using a used Dremel 1672 and the learning curve seems a bit steep and I've had to make modifications especially with the blade adapters. The allen screws were just one so I use a Phillips screw, but even that never seems to tighten enough.  My hands shake a tad too much for the Allen screws and can't get enough torque. The Phillips works better.
The real problem I'm running across is threading the fine blades into tiny holes and the guard foot gets in the way. I guess I'm just used to using a sledge hammer to crack eggs. My background is auto body work so brute force usually worked for me.
Perhaps I'm doing things in the wrong order. What order do most of you use when threading blades into tiny holes? If I secure the blade into the bottom adapter first I run into the problem of the blade binding when trying to catch the top adapter and if I reverse the process I run into not being able to thread into the bottom adapter in the limited space under the table surface.  Of course the guard foot gets in the way. I'd like to modify the foot to make it easily removable. 
Maybe I just need a little more patience.
I read the thread on the blower bellow and yes, mine is also about as useless as a sledge hammer in brain surgery so I'm thinking of using a spare air tank for that problem.
I'll keep plugging away here. I've got more time now days than money.