Scroll Saw Blog

I finished gluing up the second Dragons Clock, so I took several pictures and decided to write this summary. For those of you who have not been following the saga, this pattern was restored and redrawn by Pedro of www.finescrollsaw.com . The link to his pattern is here.

The pattern came as a color printout on A3 size paper. This caused a little trouble, as it wouldn’t fit easily on my legal-size scanner. Although I did scan & piece for the first blank, I ended up purchasing an A3 scanner from Mustek. This will allow me to scan in a lot of the 11×17 patterns without having so much splicing. Splicing is a pain to do, and also introduces inaccuracies as the two parts seem to not quite match.

The pattern was fine lines, looked to be .5pt wide. They were obviously computer generated and much superior to the hand-drawn lines I’ve seen on many a pattern. There were some places were the printer didn’t put down the ink, but these were relatively minor and I was able to correct them in the scanned image using Corel Draw (I used ver12, but not anything special to that version).

You’ll notice the fine fretwork on this pattern. Once the pattern was scanned and doctored, I colored the holes a very light gray. This made it much easier to determine which side of the line was the waste. The veining lines I colored green to let me know that they were veins. After I was happy, I printed the pattern on a 13×9 Cannon printer using 11×17 paper. The front was just a little wide, so I had to splice one of the feet.

Despite the complexity, there really wasn’t any extremely delicate cuts on the clock itself. Being about 15″ high, and with the blank around 16″, there was some contortions on my part when that 16″ came into the stomach :-). The trick to minimize that is to place the blade entry holes always towards the center. That way you’re cutting towards the end and most of the blank is towards the rear of the saw (& not the stomach!). Cut down one side of the hole, return to the entry hole & then cut down the other. That made things a lot easier.

Pedro mentions that the veining should be done with a spiral. I’m not good enough to use those blades, so I used flat blades throughout. I didn’t have any trouble at all with the flats–I used a #5 Pegas Blade throughout the main clock.

Assembling the clock was relatively simple, despite the tabs. The front foot went in the front with no problem. However, the tabs for the roof had to be widened for it to fit properly. I took off about 2mm on each side. This could very well be the scanner/printer; I didn’t measure the original pattern. Other than I don’t like tabs, this was about a 10 minute clean-up/fit. The roof needs the edges sanded to a 30 degree bevel; this was done on a 6×48 belt sander. The base plate fits in a wide slot in the front; this was difficult for me to fit, as you’ve got a real long straight line to cut. I made my adjustments to the bottom, so it’s not too noticeable.

The only real tricky cutting is the dial ring. I cheated on the circles by using a #66 drill bit. The real tricky parts were done with a 000 blade (Flying Dutchman “puzzle” blade that happened to be on the saw). The rest was done with a Pegas #1.

I used canarywood for the main clock body. The front and back are glued panels. For the dial ring I used bloodwood. The canarywood cuts very nicely and has nice color. The bloodwood looks nice, but is a bear to cut. In places I was cutting about 2-3mm and then had to clean the gum off the blade. The canarywood was dipped in boiled linseed oil/mineral oil (50/50). The bloodwood was simply sanded to 320grit using the 6×48 belt sander. BLO doesn’t work well on the bloodwood; it tends to leave a greasy film that won’t cure.

I stacked two blanks for the cutting. The first copy had a Hermle pendulum movement with Winchester/Bim-Bam chime. This movement can’t handle but a 1/4″ thick board, so I left off the bloodwood ring and used a larger dial. Unfortunately the dial doesn’t quite cover the tabs in the front. I will replace this dial once I find one that will. The second one has a simple non-chiming pendulum movement. I added a glass bezel with dial, as this seems to me to be a more formal clock.

And now for some pictures. Below is a link to a bigger image. Warning: some of these are quite large files.

This first one is of the front, looking straight on to the clock. Notice how the dragon dial ring spouts flame that wraps around the dial, becoming the dragon once again.

Larger image is here

This next image is looking at the clock on an angle. You can see how it’s put together in this image.

Larger image is here.

For completeness, I’ve added an image of the back. Notice that there is still detail on the edges, though it’s hard to make out the back from the front in this picture. Trust me, it’s there–I had to cut out all them little holes!

Larger image is here.

To give you an idea of what the detail looks like, here is a close-up of one of the dragons on the side of the front. Notice the veining work on the flame.

Full size image is here.

And here is one of the dragon on the top of the clock.

Larger image is here.

In summary, this was an enjoyable pattern. I wouldn’t want to do it as my very first project, but if you’re comfortable cutting holes within 5mm of each other, I’d feel confident at giving it a try. For what it’s worth, I didn’t break any of the fretwork while cutting!

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