Scroll Saw Blog

When working with small & tight fretwork, one major problem is hole drilling.  For the small holes you end up using tiny drill bits, and those bits have an annoying habit of following the grain instead of drilling straight down. In extreme cases the drill bit can deflect 1/4″ or more, usually ruining the piece.
For [...]

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It’s also the final order for the year.  I drew this pattern for a customer, and then cut it out.  It’s getting easier to draw the patterns, after several tries . One of the tricks is remembering you’re doing an impression of the dog, not an exact picture.  You have to take a color [...]

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I rarely use plywood, as I’m a fan of solid wood. However, the Japanese Lanterns require a thin, relatively large sheet for the panels.  Solid wood would just be too fragile, so I do use 1/8″ Baltic Birch plywood here. My problem:  How do you finish-sand the plywood?  My normal sander is a Delta 6″x48″ [...]

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One way to make Tuliptree more efficient is to have parts organized. That way you go straight to the piece you want when assembling items, instead of hunting around.  Also, for pre-cut wooden parts like the animal puzzle bases, I can have several pieces ready to go.  This speeds the assembly and reduces my labor [...]

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One issue with scrolling as a business is “how do you decrease time per item?”. When I first started making the animal puzzles I would sand each piece by itself, and dunk each piece in the BLO mix by itself. Sanding pieces individually would result in slightly different thicknesses, while individual dunking just [...]

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I had a person ask in what order do I do veining: all at once, or by section. The short answer, like too many in life is “it depends”. Actually, the order I cut is mostly dependent on the fragility of the piece. If the veining is not too complex, I’ll tend [...]

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The complex clocks are fun, but the animal puzzles make considerably more money at the shows. So, I grabbed a 7″ sassafras board that was sitting around and got it ready for the puzzles. Instead of the planer I used the drum sander to get the board down to 3/4″. And found out the [...]

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A couple of weeks ago I cut several plates and plate rims. The rims are 1/8″ wood, and when cut leave a decent size hole in the middle. Instead of just wasting this wood, I’ve been using these leftover pieces for butterfly wings. Below is a set of walnut wings ready for the [...]

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I took the “baby” drum sander out for a spin with some animal puzzles today. The goal is to do the final sanding quicker than with the 6×48 belt sander. Another objective is to do the final sanding on something longer than 10″, which is about the longest I can do on the [...]

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