Scroll Saw Blog

The snowstorm is over; about 6″ landed on the driveway.  Kenai Dawn on the Mountain, our youngest Maine Coon, hadn’t yet had the pleasure of being “thrown” (dropped actually ) into the snow.  So this morning we took him out and let him experience his “heritage” (Maine coons are supposed to be working cats that originally lived in the barns and helped keep the vermin down. Of course, Kenai’s ancestors haven’t done anything like that in generations).

Now remember, all of our cats are indoor cats–the usual reaction is “What the rotten catfood is this white stuff? I’m going back indoors NOW”. Kenai is much more laid back.  He pretty much stood there.  He still didn’t know that that messy white stuff was–he kept his foot in the air for quite a while–but he didn’t run. After he had his picture taken, we picked him up and took him back inside.  He promptly went to the cat food dish and started munching down.

Kenai Dawn on the Mountain Snowcat Picture

Today I used the Kreg Bandsaw Fence for some “real” resaw work. The first piece was a 4-1/2″ wide piece of sassafras.  Initial prep work was the usual jointer (flat face) -> planer (other flat face) -> jointer (square edge) -> tablesaw (other edge parallel).  Since the piece was not going to be flipped like you would normally on tablesaw resaw work I didn’t bother using the jointer on the 2nd edge (the one ripped on the tablesaw).

I set the fence to about 1/16″ wider than the 1/4″ resaw I wanted.  I used a featherboard to keep the bottom from drifting away from the edge.  However I didn’t tighten the featherboard against the board as this would add too much pressure on the bandsaw blade. It was there mainly to make sure I didn’t push/pull the board away from the fence.  The featherboard didn’t get set until the blade was fully into the wood. After pulling the board about 8″ or so I stopped the saw and put some thin pieces of scrap in the kerf to keep it open–the board wanted to snap together after cutting.  This happens a lot with hardwoods that have stress in them from the way the tree grew and how it was cut on the sawmill.  The scraps in the kerf also kept me from closing the kerf on the blade when I switched from pushing the board to pulling it from behind.  A small push stick kept the blade against the blade as I finished pulling it through the blade.

After getting two 1/4″ pieces out of the first board, I then did some real work on another sassafras board.  This board was 3-1/4″ wide–the two pieces are then panel-glued to make the flat pieces for the woven boxes.

Some observations:

• My bandsaw is very underpowered for resaw work.  It only has a 1/2 hp motor.  This made resawing the first board slow work. The narrower board went quicker, but still slow.
• For those folks that don’t like tablesaws, it does have less “I-gonna-lose-a-finger” stress.  No kickback, no fighting the board.
• Since you’re cutting everything in one pass, alignment issues aren’t so picky as on the tablesaw
• I didn’t notice blade drift on either board. It is possible that the drift was into the fence and the reason it was so slow-going was the fence was fighting the blade. Regardless the cut was mostly straight–planing the resawn board didn’t show any varying thickness issues
• It *appears* that the kerf is thinner.  I haven’t made measurements to see if there is much improvement over the tablesaw

So far I’m happy with the Kreg Bandsaw Fence. I really need to re-power the bandsaw, but that’s a future project.  Until then, I expect resawing will be limited to softer woods such as sassafras.

We survived Day #1 of the latest, greatest snowstorm. So far, there’s about 4″ on the ground.  Jenny and I went for a short walk around, with Jen taking several pictures.  Here is one of her favourites:

Snow on the Oakleaf Hydrangea

The latest “Big Snow Storm” is starting.  We had to get a few things at the grocery (milk/flour) before the roads got trashed, but it looks like it’s not going to be as bad as they’re making it out to be. The Indianapolis NWS office is maintaining a blog of the storm. They did have an early entry that was a little cute:

8:51 AM…A spotter in Hendricks county reports snow has started to fall in the form of snow.

They’ve since corrected it (the first snow is now “precipitation”), but it shows how it’s a good idea to check your entry before hitting <send>.

Meanwhile, I’m on the inside.  Just resawed some sassafras on the bandsaw using the Kreg jig–more later, but the initial impression is you really should have something more than half a horse powering the bandsaw when resawing!

Here’s some pictures of another person’s version of the Diana tray.  Cathy used some special beads that have some family significance for the beads in the central oval. She didn’t say, but I’m guessing it’s made from mahogany and lacewood.  The cutting is good–it can be difficult to get those mortise/tenon and box joints cut accurately on a scrollsaw. I’m sure the recipient will be proud of it!

Cathy, if you’d like to add anything, feel free.

Diana tray by Cathy

Diana tray by Cathy

We spent the day on the Ohio house, replacing plugs and general cleaning.  Not to mention a trip to the commissary. I got a  nice email from someone who has cut out the Diana tray from the magazine article.  She included pictures, which I plan on putting up here shortly.

Right now we’re battening down the hatches–NOAA is promising us a nasty snow storm tomorrow, so we’re making sure we don’t have to go anywhere. The house is on top of a hill with some rather steep driveway grades.  We can probably get down, but not back up !

Just about got the deer boxes done.  Actually one is, the one with the walnut background. The cherry and other sassafras box just need the glass glued in and they’ll be finished.  Since they were just oiled this afternoon, that will have to wait a day or so.  The blue glass in the cherry box is wedge in; the green glass for the other one was too loose to do the same.

The cherry box will be a gift to the person who gave me the cherry tree; it was made from that tree. I like the way it came out, and would love to do another. The problem is that cherry is a little hard, so cutting the sides takes quite a bit of time. Those sides take up most of the cutting time to start with!

I’m also playing around with making a double-height box.  I mass produce the woven sides, and by stacking two of them I can easily make it double height–the weave matches up nicely. When chopping the corners I get to a point where the stock piece is a little short to comfortably cut on the table saw.  The leftover piece just happens to be around the right size for the double-height. We’ll see–I still need another long corner piece first !

Here is all three boxes:

Deer Woven Boxes

Here’s a close up of the cherry box.  The stained glass is actually quite a bit darker. The flash on the camera lightened it up quite a bit. Also the cherry is a bit closer to the color in the picture above, and not as dark as in this one.  Oh, the joy of color-correcting digital pictures !

Cherry Deer Woven Box with Stained Glass

While I resaw on the tablesaw just about everybody else in the scrollsaw universe uses a bandsaw.  Some reasons I use the tablesaw:

• Safety: I always use push sticks, so the blade is at least 2′ away from the flesh at all times. The bandsaw is not as open to push stick use.
• Comfort: I’ve been resawing for 20 years on the tablesaw.  I’m comfortable with how it “feels”, and can feel when things aren’t right.
• Fingers:  My reflexes are heavily based on the scrollsaw–the fingers are close to the blade.  Touch a scrollsaw blade and you may get some blood–touch a bandsaw blade and you will get a stub where the finger *was*….
• Precision: Set the fence on the tablesaw, and you’re going to cut that width.  No fence on the bandsaw.

I’ve got a 14″ Delta bandsaw that’s pushing 20 that doesn’t get much use–I’m just not a bandsaw fan. The local Woodcraft has a special going on the Kreg fences, so I decided to try my hand at bandsaw resawing. The fence as shown runs just over $100.  Right now they also throw in a resaw attachment, not shown below. I also got a decent 1/2″ 3tpi blade.

The fence attaches easily to the table–the instructions were much more detailed than most I’ve read, and I had no trouble. There are adjustments for squaring the fence to the blade and adjusting for blade drift.  The first is not supposed to be needed, but is there just in case.  The other I haven’t done yet.

A few test piece of sassafras around 1+” ripped easily on the fence with no drift.  I haven’t tried to resaw yet–have to clear some room so I can run a 24″ or so board through the blade.

I’ve had good luck with Kreg products, which is one reason I went with this fence.  I’ll report more on my experiences with it–once there are some :-)!

Kreg Bandsaw Fence

As promised in a previous post, here is the walnut cat-and-mouse clock with the printed dial. I’ve got another one almost finished; it has a sassafras cat and mouse with a walnut background.

Cat and Mouse Clock (Walnut)

Weird problem solved…details below:

A week ago or so I decided to break down and make a zero-clearance insert for the Steel City tablesaw. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, but it’s another boring, necessary, not-really-painful-but-really-don’t-want-to-do-it task. So I grabbed a chunk of sassafras, ripped it to a little wider than the width of the insert, and planed it down to the same thickness as the metal insert.  Chop it to rough length, buy a pattern bit for the router, and use the router table to shape the insert to size.

Of course, the insert won’t fit with a 10″ blade in place.  Out comes a Dremel tool to dig out a groove for the blade.  Yeah, chisels would work better, but they’re in Ohio.    And of course there’s also a weird lip in the granite I needed accommodate so it would fit flush to the top.  At this point I realize that forstner bits would also remove the would.  Wish I had thought of that earlier . This saw has a riving blade, so I had to cut a slot in the insert for it.  Nice to have a scrollsaw laying around .

OK, everything so far is pretty normal procedure for making your own insert.  The next step is to clamp the insert in place and raise the blade through the wood. For some reason the blade really didn’t want to cut through it. IT’S SASSAFRAS!!!! IT AIN’T THAT HARD!!!!  I finally cut,burnt, and pounded the blade through the insert.  Smoke everywhere, but it’s cut.

Now for the not-so-fun: I first tried it out on a cross cut.  It didn’t like to cut my test piece, and the cut was very rough. Not too good, don’t know why.  Well, it is a rip blade, not a combo or crosscut blade. Let’s try a rip…. Bad news: yes, it would rip a piece of waste sassafras, but it strained, squealed, burned, and just really didn’t want to do it. Maybe I bent the riving knife (It’s aluminum–home made on the scrollsaw)–remove the knife, and same problem.  HOW THE ____ DO YOU RUIN A CARBIDE-TOOTHED BLADE CUTTING ***SASSAFRAS***?!?!?!?!?!

Remove insert, remove blade, put combo blade back in, put OEM metal insert in, and forget about it for a while, worrying that I ruined a $30 blade and maybe a $1800 saw.  Cutting sassafras.

<TIME PASSES>

I really need the rip blade: I need to cut the corner pieces for the woven boxes, and the width of the slot needs to be that of a thin-kerf blade. Pray, cross fingers, and grab the rip blade.  Notice the kickback teeth on the blade.  Notice that they kind of resemble saw teeth.  Note that the paint is not on the tip of the kickback teeth.  Notice that there is an arrow on the blade (very small, but present). Notice that the blade will go in two ways. Put blade on, checking the arrow 3 times and also the location of the carbide teeth. Pray again, cross fingers, uncross fingers (after all, you do need them to turn the power on and hold the workpiece ), and cut a chunk of …..sassafras.  IT CUTS FINE! Put zero-clearance insert in and try another piece.  IT CUTS BETTER!!!

The moral of this long story: Check the blade to make sure it’s really going in the right direction.

Side note: You can rip with an extremely dull steel blade (note the kickback teeth), but it ain’t pretty !

Here’s a picture of the blade (inserted correctly), the zero-clearance sassafras insert, and the tip of the shop made aluminum riving knife.

Rip Blade with zero clearance insert and aluminum blade