Scroll Saw Blog

The parts for the old Porter-Cable micropinner came in today.  Wonder-of-wonders, I was able to put them right on ! Anyway, with a little trepidation and images of exploding power tools flashing in my mind, I shot out a few pins, and IT WORKED!!!
As to the Harbor Freight $25 special?  Well, I didn’t have [...]

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Taking a chance here…I really need that micropinner (My Porter-Cable PIN100 had an encounter with a slab of concrete and bent its nose) and I’m not sure when the replacement parts will arrive.  We were down toward Indianapolis today, so we swung by Harbor Freight and found they did have a 23 gauge micropinner. My [...]

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Harbor Freight is a good source of cheap tools–but you have to be careful.  I consider what I get from them as “Disposable Tools”. If you need something for a one-time special job, it might make sense to get the tool from them, and assume it won’t last beyond the job at hand.  However, on [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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We finally got the dust collector moved over to Indiana.  It’s not set up yet (see previous post on relatives ), but at least it’s here.  I’m looking at putting some overhead pipes to keep the hoses off the floor. That should make the system work better, too, and also to be *used* more! [...]

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One of the main features I wanted with the Steel City tablesaw was the riving knife.  This is something relatively new for the North American tablesaws (I understand it’s been standard in Europe for a while). The saw comes with two knives: One for standard blades and one for thin kerf blades. However, the Freud [...]

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I finally had most of the pieces in place for resawing over here in Pendleton:  Tablesaw, jointer, and some means of thickness-ing. Although a planer would have been best, I was able to slooooooowly use the drum sander in its place.  Drum sanders aren’t designed for thickness sanding, but if you’re careful about it and [...]

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Today I re-invested some of Tuliptree’s profits.  I’ve been needing a good, replacement jointer for some time.  The one I have got beat up pretty bad in some of the moves, with some of the adjustment pieces missing and others rusted up. I’ve been happy with my granite table saw, so I went ahead and [...]

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