Leaderboard

After cutting this I sat on my front porch and got still and quiet. My favorite squirrel got within a few feet from me. I can tell him apart because he's more brown than gray and has a skinnier tail. Lots of good things happen when we take the time to be still.

Just recently retired, my background is in optics but I have built a couple of houses with my Dad and lot's of other "stuff" I have every tool imaginable (I am a collector) my scroll saw is a ~ 1948 Delta 40-440 that I restored which was my Dad's. I like to jump in so I wanted to make a puzzle for my Granddaughter who likes Unicorns. I found at least a new to me idea to put the pattern onto the wood which took no time at all, I have a laser engraver so I just put a vector up sized to fit my cedar fence post and made my direct to wood pattern. I grabbed a spiral blade ( I bought a bunch of others but can't find them ) I stopped because I wasn't happy with the results and I couldn't see well enough plus that blade is aggressive! Still learning and having fun, most of the stuff I made these day's are for the Grand kids. Attached is the Unicorn for my first attempt, critics are welcome. Thanks for having me, Pete

Barn and fence - I just finished cutting this scroll saw wood-art piece today. Lots of hours in this one.

@OCtoolguy, you flagged my last comment as sad... I am not sad. I am not ready to go just yet. But I have had a chance to live during a great time, and I have no regrets other than my Grandchildren did not live closer. But they have always been in touch and included me in their lives, so I am very grateful. A week ago I got to go to a party for my oldest Grandchild, my Granddaugter's engagement to a very fine man. I now have hope for great-grandchildren. If they are not too slow on the draw if you know what I mean. This thread is about light, so I will end by saying there is a ray of light for great-grandchildren.

Not a jab at all. You are far smarter than I will ever be. I prove my lack of knowledge on a daily basis. Just ask my wife.

I got the coffin pattern form Alex Fox and the jack-o-lanterns I got from here last year and made some changes

Again I will make a comment here because of Ray's thoughts. he said better light longer life. That is not always true so please do not say things like this. Again Not all LEDs are made the same I have seen Leds blow out and flicker in 6 months. I have seen Fluorescents last for years. Every time you throw a switch on you jolt electronics or filaments and depending how heavy duty they are they will absorb this. Take a look at your saws. Every time you start and stop the saw you jolt that motor. The better saws have better motors plain and simple. If you are fine with old fluorescents then do not let anyone here talk you out of them. There are still plenty around for replacement. What works for one is not for all.

I obtained a ‘Limitless Lines Design’ Stained-Glass Pattern from Etsy that I thought would be easy to convert to a suitable Intarsia project pattern. The Heron is an almost a direct copy, but I modified the background significantly to work better in wood. In doing so, I messed up the perspective somewhat by lowering the land on the far side of the water. This was not obvious to me until the project was nearly complete. I’ll live with it as is, but I have already corrected the pattern, to be more in keeping with the original pattern, that I will share in Pattern Exchange. Woods used include Premium Pine, Blue Pine, Yellowheart, Cherry, Walnut, Aspen, Black Limba, and some 4/4” thick Sapele for the fixed Frame. The Cherry I used for the Water was too close in color to the Pink toned Pine I used for the Sky, so I enhanced the color with some Blue/Green dye. The Grey and Light-colored areas of the Blue Pine worked well for most of the Heron itself, but I had to darken a few areas using some very diluted Black dye. The Eye was painted with White and Black acrylic paint. Currently, my wood selection is limited, therefore so are my choices since I would have really preferred to use a different wood for the Sky. The approximate 80 pieces of this project was quite a challenge to cut and assemble. After all the pieces were cut, shaped, textured and sanded - knowing I was going to frame the panel - I first assembled the background, within a rectangular jig sized to the finish panel size, onto a 1/8” thick BB Ply Backer. The Blue Pine is only a scant 5/8” thick and I wanted the Heron to sit proud of the background, so I cut a 1/4“thick shim to fit the remaining area and then I fit the Heron into the area. The many small pieces of the Heron’s body proved impossible to assemble, one by one, into the open area. I was forced to use CA to edge-glue the pieces together and fit into the open area as one piece. Being very careful to fit the pieces together accurately, this worked out well. The 1” wide Sapele was rabbeted 1/4" to produce a 3/4" wide border Frame. The rails were mitered and cut accurately for a tight-neat fit around the glued-in panel. The completed Assembly was finished with multiple coats of rattle-can Clear Gloss Acrylic Finish spray with light sanding/buffing in between coats. Comments and critiques allways welcome.

I got a harbor freight workbench. It has holes for clamping. These are called dogs holes. I got this idea that harbor freight's toggle clamps could be used as dog clamps. So I created a base for the toggle clamp. I got 3/4" dowel and then cut a slot in the dowel. Now I can cut half rounds in a wood base to match the dowel. It would be hard to do this by hand but scroll saw worked very well. It turns out this specific toggle clamp sucks big time for this application. But the dowel and base works pretty well. I will just cut off the toggle clamp.

Great looking heron.

Thanks for the tip. I do plan to do things manually.

Frank, that is beautiful, excellent job, RJ

Frank, I thank you for a detailed explanation of the steps that you went through to create this piece. I like the heron a lot. The fact that you used a stained-glass pattern as a starting point has given me an idea. Stained-glass work is also one of my hobbies and what I am now going to do is to look through stained-patterns and attempt to find one that would also look good as intarsia - or perhaps as segmentation. Then I will create both. I'm not sure why this never occurred to me before.

Spiral blades are unsuitable for puzzles as the kerf is much too wide. I use a Pegas #3 for puzzels.

You are proving my point. Not all LED lamps are equal. Many of these coming from China are just cheap garbage. How did we live so long with old fashion incandescent and fluorescents? You learned the hazards and you stayed away from them There are now hazards with new technology also and LEDs are on that list. Do not get me started on Electric cars because that is another fallacy that is suppose to save energy. I will leave this note, stop and think how was each part made for electric cars. How is charging done. Lithium Ion batteries how safe are they? Go to trade in an electric car and see how much value is lost with each year. Alot more than a combustion engine. Are we going in the right direction? depends how you look at things I guess. OK I am off my soap box and happy light shopping. This is for you Kevin. You may not believe this but LED lights degrade faster in warmer temps than in cold and in cold the light output is brighter than warmer temps. You may not notice this but again things that do not get mentioned much when sales are involved. As far as flickering that would make this thread alot longer to give all the reasons LED can flicker as well as stay lit even with the light switch off. You will see lots of this when you are in a power shortage situation like summer times when they drop voltages to save power. This can damage LEDS as well as motors and so many other things. The life expectancy of those LED lights can be compromised and now you are replacing more often. I know this has gone in a different direction and all but it gets overlooked many times with progress.

Very nice job, I like the presentation and the contrast between the piece and the backer board!

Steve, in observing how you secured the glass, I notice that you managed to cut the glass in a perfect circle. I'm OK at glass cutting, but not nearly as good as you. Because of this, your method would not work well for me. I'm attaching a photo of how I secured the glass with a back view of the 'sort of oval' glass that I cut for Fiona's 'Blue Tits on Hawthorn".

I use what ever scraps. For my class I got a piece of ash 1 3/4 square in the discount bin at my lumber yard. Cheap. 4 feet for $8 I had some basswood squares and as an experiment I cut one out to see what it looked like. Easy to cut but It looked way too white. I then just dipped in stain. (Oak) and it came out okay. I should have spend a little time sanding. The squares are cheap on amazon but 1.4 x 1.4 which I think would work.

I used scrap pieces of Hardwood, just glued them together to get the right thickness and get rid of scraps better than using the stove

A few projects for Halloween.

Not really spooky will go on porch right after our Thanksgiving.

Done at the request of my wife, Jack Skellington. Just found a cool pic on Google, same with his bow-tie. Also, done at my daughter's request (double-stacked this one, cuz its just that cool), John Wick. AKA, Baba-Yaga, the Boogeyman. Pencil holder was kludged together from some scrap, cut and sanded to size, and two holes drilled in for the pencils. Ignore the nail file, that was there to keep the pencils from leaning against the frame as the glue dried (also, they're great for sanding in hard-to-reach places, easy to cut to shape for awkward sanding, and a pack of 50 cost me $1 at WalMart).