Finally Done !!!!

Wow a lot has happened over the last several months and not a lot of it has to to with woodworking.  I transferred with my job from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City and so that has really occupied me for several months.  I won't go in to the whole saga here but there were many issues that came up as we tried to move from Las Vegas to Salt Lake.  We actually arrived in Salt Lake with no place to live but eventually got most things settled.  We have one more move coming up in February and then I will be permanently settled in Salt Lake.

As a result of all this my woodworking equipment was in storage for awhile and I didn't really work on anything but starting in October I was able to get back to my nativity scene.  I am now finished with all 12 pieces of the Kathy Wise nativity scene that I started on back in April.  This project has been such a good learning experience.  I made several mistakes and had to start some pieces over but they became better.  I ended up doing the whole thing out of poplar and stain.  A few things that I learned is that not all poplar is created equal.  I found that some of the wood I used was much more green than other wood.  By green I don't mean not as dry but actually more green in color.  Some poplar is much more white.  I can see it especially after staining the items.  The stain really comes out different depending on the base color of the wood.  I guess that is one thing that is a disadvantage to staining is that you don't really know what color it will be in the end.

At one point I had cut out several small 2 inch square blocks of poplar and stained each one with one of the stain colors I have.  That gave me a basic guide but some of my finished nativity scene pieced turned out to no be the same color as any of the blocks.  You will notice it especially on the camel and the ox.  They were cut from poplar that had a much darker green tint to it.

I also realized one more thing while doing my last 2 pieces.  I feel sort of dumb now but I was putting a couple of coats of polyurethane on each piece and then gluing everything together.  My last two pieces I glued it all together first and then applied the finish to the piece as a whole.  It was a lot faster, a lot easier, and it looks the same.

Well, here are several pictures of the finished pieces.  Enjoy! ..... Not sure what I will work on next.

A little closer look at the detail

I used a wood burner to create the lines on the camel's hump

The finished Joseph I started months ago!

A closer look at the detail of Joseph

The complete 12 piece set

Nativity Scene - Joseph Part 3

Today I used my sanding sponges and polished the shaped pieces.  While doing so I found a couple of places I wasn't really happy with and so I sanded those a bit more.  But I spent quite a bit of time with the sanding sponges smoothing out all the sanding marks and giving each piece a nice smooth surface ready for staining.

I realized that in my pictures it might be a bit hard to see the relief detail so I took another picture from an angle so you can see the shaping I have done to give depth to the pieces and make it appear more 3D.

Nativity Scene - Joseph part 2

Here is Joseph after the rough shaping.  I have defined the edges and the depth that I want.  I used a 1/2 inch sanding band on my rotary tool to do most of this.  I have some small carving and etching bits that fit in my rotary tool.  I used one of those the get into the parts where the sanding band wouldn't fit.  This was mostly under the head of the robe where the robe is on top of the head.  I also used it to carve out the folds.

From this point I will use find sandpaper to smooth off all the pieces.  I will also use an air hose to get all the dust out of the folds.  You can't see them well here because they are full of dust.  I will also try and smooth out the inside of the top of the shepherd staff a little.  I didn't cut that part so well.

I don't have a nice sanding mop like the pros use to smooth this out.  So my cheap solution are sanding sponges that I get at Lowes.  The sanding sponges come in 60 grit, 220 grit, and 320 grit if I remember right.  I will mostly use the medium and fine sponges to get it ready for staining.  The sponges are nice because they are easy to hold and they will form to the piece a little like a sanding mop would do.  I also buy the ones that slanted edges rather than straight 90 degree edges because they can fit into small spaces nicely.

Nativity Scene - Joseph

I want to document my process for making these nativity scene pieces so I will start with showing the Joseph piece and include pictures along the way.  This one I am going to again just use poplar and stain the pieces the color I want them.

You start with a pattern like this.  Each piece is marked and a color suggestion.  M is medium color, D is dark color, L is light color and the face and hands are White.  I will leave the face and hands plain poplar, since that is the wood it calls for anyway. I still need to decide on the other colors but that can come later.  (The suggested wood is Sycamore for the light, Beech for the medium, Black Walnut for the dark, and Poplar for the face, hands, and feet.)  The pattern also has some shaping suggestions.  The shaded areas are those areas where you want to sand down more to create depth.  For example, the top of the head will get sanded down to make it appear to go up under the headdress.

After placing the pattern on the piece of poplar, I cut out all the pieces.  I separated them a little here so you can see the cuts. The hardest part is trying to determine what order to cut them in.  You want to try and cut the smaller pieces while they are still attached to larger pieces so you have something to hold on to.  I managed to cut all these out with my fingers in intact! This piece is about 3 inches tall.

Nativity Scene - Mary

Another post today!  Trying to get caught up.  After doing a couple of segmentation projects I was interested in true intarsia.  I have also wanted to do a nativity scene for a long time.  I searched around and found a pattern by Kathy Wise in the Holiday 2007 issue of Scroll Saw Woodworking & Crafts.  I ordered the magazine and read her article on how to complete the nativity scene.  I have also bought a couple of her books so I did some general reading about intarsia work.

After all was said and done, I chickened out buying some expensive hardwood and reduced this to another segmentation project.  I cut the pattern out of poplar and then stained the pieces the different colors rather than actually using different species of wood.  As you might guess, it seems to me that segmentation is much simpler to do.  Since you cut everything from the same board if you miss the lines a little it doesn't matter because the pieces still fit together.  If you were cutting them out of different wood, you would need to be much more careful about cutting right on the lines.

So this is how the Mary of the 12 piece pattern turned out.

I cut everything from poplar.  The face and hands I left as plain poplar.  I just sanded and shaped those and they got a coat of varnish at the end with everything else.  The lighter part of the robe I used Minwax Chestnut stain and the darker part is Minwax Red Mahogany.

Shaping this was a lot of fun but tricky in places.  Shaping between the knees was hard because I couldn't get anything in that place.  I ended up using a carving knife to shape it.  I am going to do a few more pieces and than maybe get up the guts to buy some hardwood and try this for real!

To finish I painted each separate piece with a couple of coats of varnish.  I used Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane.  Then I used gel CA glue to glue all the pieces together.

Giraffe Segmentation

I have been reading some of the post on the Scroll Saw Woodworking and Crafts site and I will concede that this is a segmentation project.  So here is how the giraffe went.

This actually went similar to the elephant.  I followed the same process for cutting and sanding.  It was a little more difficult because there are some small pieces.  I also used a wood carving gouge to cut the mouth.  As I suggested before I made the frame first.  After this I used Mod Podge to put the background paper on the backer board and then glued the finished frame to the backer board and clamped it down and let the glue dry for a day.  Then I fit the rest of the pieced into the frame.  I started with the right hand leaf first.  (As you can see I used some scrapbook paper on the leaves also.)  Then I added the pieces of the mane that fit in the leaf and then the giraffe head fit against the leaf and the bottom of the frame.  From there I just glued everything else in place.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  Gluing the frame together was still sort of a pain so now I want to invest in a picture frame clamp.  I found a couple of good ones on Amazon.

First try at Intarsia

I guess some people may claim this is a segmentation project and not a true intarsia project.  As I understand, segmentation is cutting the same piece of wood into smaller pieces that are the fit together, usually after painting them or something.  Intarsia uses different wood species to accomplish the color and pattern of the image.  Whatever, it was a lot of fun!!

We are expecting our first grandchild in May and this is for his nursery!  I found the picture on the Internet and made a pattern from it.  I just printed out the picture, got some tracing paper and traced over the lines I wanted to cut and then scanned the tracing paper into a jpg file that I could fix up.  

After printing out the pattern I applied it to a piece of 3/4 inch pine and cut out the pieces.  The first step was to decide how to shape the pieces.  On the leaf I used the saw to cut it down to 1/4 inch thick so it sits way back.  I then used a belt sander to trim off 1/8 inch on the body and the outside of the ears.  The inside of the ears I trimmed off 1/4 inch.

Now that the depth looked good I used a rotary tool with a 1/2 inch sanding band to round off all the edges. It took on a really great look at that point.  I was impressed that the feet look like they sit back a bit from the dirt/rock he is standing on but actually they are the same depth.  The rounding gives that illusion.  I drilled 3/8 inch holes for the eyes and used the sander to round off the end of a 3/8 inch dowel.  I cut off about 1/4 inch after rounding it and it fit nicely in the holes I had drilled.  

Next step was painting.  I just used regular acrylic paint.  The toes and eyes are black.  The inside of the ears are black with a little white mixed in.  I used regular gray for the head, body, feet, and ears and a brown/tan for the dirt.  The leaf is a light green and I used a toothpick and dark green to make the lines.

Next I used Loctite gel super glue to glue all the pieces together.  I then used a length of red oak trim to make the frame.  Fitting the frame around the elephant was a little difficult to make fit nicely.  Last step was to take a piece of 1/8 inch hardwood and glue everything to it.  First I used Mod Podge to mount a piece of scrapbook paper.  Then I glued on the elephant which is a whole piece at this time and then glued the frame around it.  I used a combination of Loctite and wood glue to glue to the backer board.  I finished it off with a few coats of Matte Spray Finish.

There are a few things I will do differently next time.  I am currently working on a giraffe to go with it.  The picture isn't exactly square.  It is close but not quite.  Next time I will start by gluing the frame on first.  Then I know the frame will be square.  Then I will glue things together within the frame and on the backer board so they fit nicely.  I didn't see much advantage to gluing the whole thing up first before applying it to the backer board even though that is how the books say to do it.

I might do a combination of those things.  I might glue things together within the frame but not to the backer board.  Then I know it will fit and if need be I can sand the back of the whole thing to make it lay a little flatter against the backer board when I glue it down.

Welcome Sign

This project sort of moved past the area of woodworking more into the area of crafts.  I hope I don't lose any man-points by doing this!  But I wanted to try a couple of different things and this helped me to do it.  First of all I got more practice on the scroll saw cutting out the sign.  The outside edge wasn't too bad and cutting out the letters on the inside actually came out better than I expected.  I have been cutting some small items on 1/4 inch birch.  I found that this 3/4 inch pine was much easier to cut.  I think the added thickness of the wood gives better control and you don't seem to stray out of the lines as quickly.

After cutting out the sign I just painted it white with some while acrylic craft paint.  Then from the back side I tried to paint the inside edges of the letters with black.  I got most of the depth from the back and then moved to the front to try and finish it.  I was using a crappy brush that had bristles springing out all over the place so I ended up getting a lot of black on the front of the sign.  After it dried I sanded down the black spots and went over those areas again with white.  I think it turned out OK.

I decided to make the sign seasonal and since St. Patrick's Day is coming up, I googled shamrocks and found lots of images.  I printed out copies in two different sizes and cut them out. They are both cut from Birch plywood.  The two smaller ones I actually cut at the same time from two pieces of birch stacked on top.  I just used clear packing tape the secure them together.  It was interesting that in cutting a stacked object like that, it really pointed out that my table and blade are not at a perfect 90 degree angle.  I thought I was pretty close but this showed how it wasn't.  I did some adjustments to the table after I cut this and it is pretty good now.

I had bought white, black, and green paint at Hobby Lobby.  The dark green one is the green paint I bought.  I then mixed the green with a little white and painted the other.  I also painted the large shamrock the dark green.  I then rummaged through my wife's scrapbook paper and found a perfect piece of shamrock paper.  I used the same pattern to cut out the paper and glued it to the shamrock.  I used Mod Podge to glue it down.  I then used a matte spray sealer to coat the whole thing a couple of times.  I tried to spray from several different sides so I could be sure and get the sides and inside the letters.

Finally I just used some small velco circles to stick the shamrocks on the board and stuck a piece of craft wire in it so I could hang it on the door.  I am in the process of making some Easter eggs that are about the same size as the shamrocks and once St. Patrick's Day is over I will take off the shamrocks and stick on the Easter Eggs.  Attaching them with velco makes this quick.  Although I am not sure what comes after Easter Eggs so when Easter is over I don't know what I will put on there!

Flying Dutchman blades

All the experts in the YouTube videos seem to really like Flying Dutchman blades. Everyone also says you need to get the scroll reverse blades so that you get a nice smooth bottom to your project. I ordered a few dozen of these blades in a couple of different sizes to give them a try.

When I bought my scroll saw it came with a dozen #5 Olson skip tooth blades. These are the ones I have been using up to this point. So I put in a Flying Dutchman (FD) #5 scroll reverse blade and started cutting a Christmas Ornament pattern. There were a few things I noticed right away.

First of all it was very difficult to tell which way the teeth went on the FD. On the Olson blades it was easy to run your finger down the blade and tell which direction the teeth were going. On the FD it felt the same going both ways. I had to use a magnifying glass to try and determine which direction they were going. The teeth don't seem to obviously point up or down. They sort of just point out. I had to look for the subtle change on the last few reverse teeth to pick out the top and bottom. Maybe this is good and that is why they are preferred but it was real hard to figure out which way to put it in.  See the pictures below for a comparison of the two blades.

Next, they seemed much more brittle than the Olson blades. I had only broken one blade up to now and I broke three FD blades on one little ornament. I don't think I was doing anything different so I was disappointed that they seemed to break so easily.

The last thing I noticed was that it was much more difficult to cut a straight line. They say that blades will always pull to one side so you have to actually go at the blade from a bit of an angle to get a straight cut. That angle was much greater with the FD blade than with the Olson blade. I guess this is something you get used to after time but it seemed much harder to get it going in a straight line and then keeping it on that line.

I will use these blades some more, especially since I bought 6 dozen of them, but after some more practice I will use the Olson blades again and see if I still prefer them. Should be an interesting exercise. I don't want to discredit some product because of my lack of skill but I want to make sure I am using the product that works best for me.

This is roughly how the blades look with the naked eye.  The Olson blade on the left has obvious teeth and you can see they are pointing down.  The Flying Dutchman blade on the right is difficult to see.

I used my camera's zoom to get this picture.  Again the Olson teeth on the left are more pronounced.  The Flying Dutchman teeth on the right are much smaller.  From the top of the picture you can see the FD teeth change direction between the 3rd and 4th teeth.

Reducing a Pattern

In my first post, How It All Started, I mentioned that the justification for getting a scroll saw was to make some small words/letters for my wife.  Now that I have my saw I had to figure out how to make smaller letters.

I used a process I learned way back in Junior High art class.  I got a large piece of poster board and traced around each letter.  Then I marked off the poster board in 1 inch squares.

Then I used graph paper that was marked out at 5 squares per inch.  I decided to reduce it to 60% of original so I used a 3x3 square on the graph paper to equal 1 square on the poster board.  I then just went square by square and drew on the graph paper square what was on the poster board square.  I used a different piece of paper for each letter so I can photocopy each page and make the letter.  The letter J is pretty big, 21 inches tall in the original, so it ended up fitting on legal size paper instead of letter size.

And this is what I ended up with!  If you are wondering about the edges, I just used a rotary tool with a sanding drum to hit the edges and make the little indentations.  I still have to figure out how I am going to paint this.  But now my wife is happy and I can make her as many of these as she wants.  Also, like I mentioned before this was made with 1 inch pine.  (Which is really 3/4 inch!)

Steve Good

One of the first people I found that had a lot of good information was Steve Good at scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com.  He has been scroll sawing for over 20 years and his information is really useful.  He also has lots of free patterns you can download and try.  Some of the things I have learned from Steve that have been useful.

How to Select a Scroll Saw

This is is really good video that talks about the features of a scroll saw.  I watched this one before deciding to buy my Delta.  From this video I learned that I wanted a saw that was easy to use, easy to change the blade, and used the flat blades and not the pin blades.  The video is actually in 2 parts so watch Part 1 and Part 2.

The Basics to Getting Started

Steve has a scroll saw school on this blog.  It is a series of 9 videos that cover the basics.  There is really good information about blades and how to get a project ready to cut.  One link for his suggested Flying Dutchman blades is to the left in the link list.  Visit Steve's school here.

What It Looks Like To Be Good.  (No pun intended!)

Here is Steve cutting out a Christmas ornament.  He goes through the whole process of applying the pattern, drilling the holes for the inside cuts and then cutting each part.  It is a little lengthy because it shows him doing the whole thing but it is amazing to watch how good his cuts are.  I use this to watch his fingers, how he holds the board, how fast he cuts, and how he hits the angles.  It is one I will watch several times.

First Project

When I got my scroll saw home I was excited to do something, anything.  So I found a small scrap piece of wood laying around.  Then I went into Word and wrote my name with a script font and made it about 48 points big.  In my initial scroll saw research I had seen people attach the patterns to the wood with spray adhesive.  I didn't have any so I got a glue stick and rubbed it on the back of the paper and stuck it to the wood.  It held secure enough to cut and it peeled right off when I was done.  I imagine you wouldn't want it to dry very long though.  So here is my very first attempt at cutting something out:

As you can see I got a little skinny on the top part of the K and a little fat on the bottom part.  Turning sharp in the m didn't turn out so well either.  But it gives me a starting point.  I got the feel for the saw and got more excited about doing better.

A whole bunch of YouTube videos later I decided to see how cutting out inside pieces would go.  A found a keychain pattern, which I will give you the link to later, and cut it out and glued it to some of the 3/4 inch pine I had left.  I drilled hole for the blade to go in and gave it a shot.  This is what happened:

It is pretty sloppy but this is what I found.  The wood for the first Kim was about half as thick as the wood from the keychain.  Cutting thicker wood is harder to cut straight and is harder to follow the lines.  I will need lots of practice for thick woods.  Also cutting out the inside pieces was pretty hard, especially the small pieces.  Again, it was hard to keep a straight line.  You can also see where I didn't drill the hole all the way through on the bottom of the K.  I had already put my drill and bits away when I discovered this and I didn't want to drag them out again so I left it as is for a reminder to always check the holes.

Now I have something to refer back to as my first cutting on a scroll saw.  We'll see how things improve from here.

BTW, the pattern for the keychain can be found on Steve Good's blog, or from this link: 

How it all started

Like all good things in life, this hobby started because of my wife. I have to thank her for her indulgence and letting me pursue something new. A few weeks ago my wife got this wood carving from a friend and wanted me to make a few copies.

This is actually the one I cut out.  I have given the original that was painted nice and everything back to my wife's friend.

It seemed kind of light but was 1 1/2 inches think. I didn't know what kind of wood they used so I just went and got some 2 by 8 boards and traced them out. One of the few power tools I own is a band saw my father gave me about a year ago. I used the band saw to cut them out and that worked OK. The wood is real hard and the inside of the J was very difficult. I ended up doing a lot of sanding to smooth it out. Then I got the idea that maybe they used two pieces of 1 inch pine glued together. (1 inch really means 3/4 inch so it ended up 1 1/2 inches:)) I tried this and it cut a little nicer but was much more expensive than the construction lumber.

Then my wife decided that she wanted some more but only about half the size. I could use just one sheet of pine instead of two and fit twice as many. Then she could have a bunch of smaller 3/4 inch thick words. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: I really would need a scroll saw to do something like that. I don't think I can make that tight of turns on a band saw.

Her: How much is a scroll saw.

Me: About $500. Everything is about $500. I have looked at table saws, drill presses, planers, scroll saws, etc. Everything is about $500.

Her: Look on Craig's List and see if there is anything. So to appease her I looked on Craig's List and found this Delta ShopMaster scroll saw for sale for $185.00.

I did some googling and found that it was probably a pretty good quality saw. It also looked in good condition so I told her what I found. To my surprise she told me to go get it. I went and took a closer look at it. He let me cut a little piece of wood to show it worked so I asked him if he would take $150 for it. He said yes so that is how I ended up with my first scroll saw!!