Hello!

[misterunix]

I found this site yesterday, boy what a mistake that was! I have a home shop for making furniture and other odds and ends; you know the basics, routers, table saw, planer, band saw. etc, etc. But I never had a use for a scroll saw. ANYWAY, I was looking for a pattern for an old 1700's candle lamp and google had a link to here for free patterns. Not knowing what trouble I was in for; I blindly jumped in with both feet.

This most horrible of links took me directly to the user area for the display of craftsmanship that lowly mortals such as I could never hope to obtain. After an hour or so (of company time), the depression was such that I felt the need to mangle my own wood and create more sawdust for my wife's flower bed.

The bipolar need to prove to myself that only the elite could achieve such beautifully crafted artifacts I stopped at the local home depot to purchase my first scroll saw.

Ah heck folks – all the dry humor aside this is what I ended up doing last night. It took 2 ½ hours to cut this out.





Thank all of you for giving me the courage to try this. I LOVE IT! I hope to do much more in the next few weeks.

[wwalker47]

Bill-
Welcome, and don't be shy.

Looks good. Real nice for your first try.

You will get the advice you ask for and some you won't.

What kind of saw did you get?

Now that you have one we will expect to see a lot of cuttings. Now, get busy!

By your userid looks like you use UNIX. So do I, I use a SunBlade150. I like UNIX better than DOS. And VI is the only way to edit a text file.

-Bill

[misterunix]

I got the cheapest saw I could which was a Ryobi $99 special from Home Depot. I also picked up a bunch of blades all different types and sizes. Walked out at $129 w/tax.

I should have started with something larger, I know that now... The actual image (hat area) is only about 4" wide and the board is white pine at 3/8" thick. The next one will be larger with thinner wood.

BTW, the wife freaked out, she had no idea what I was doing in the garage. I left the door mostly down so she couldn’t tell I wasn’t making something large. When I brought it in the house, she just about lost it. That made it all worth it!


As far a my day job/life, yep. I am a Admin from the old days. I am a Programmer / Admin / Router person and I only use VI, long enough to configure and port pico or joe. I haven’t liked VI since the 80's. I type way to fast for the limited (back then) controls available. Now a days vi isn’t so bad, I just have switched to a different editor and feel no need to go back. Besides everything from IRIX to BSD support it and it only takes a minute or two to compile. For the funny of it. I actually keep a copy of the code on my pocket USB drive! I guess I turned into a Anti-vi snob.. There are some people out there that still use ed!!! Now that is brutal!

[pete00]

howdy, welcome and nice job......

[Marcel in Longueuil]

Hi Bill,

Welcome to the group.

My application's backend and DB runs on multiple UNIX servers, and I have to go and look at it's health everyday (old app version & old servers), I have to "top" and "glance" and "more $|grep" into files and logs.

And although I love the stability that UNIX brings to a system, nothing beats a graphic and mouse click (Windows or Apple) user interface in my mind for ease of use.

And Notepad is so much easier than Vi or Ed or Sed or Gawk to edit text.

And that is why at the end of the day I love to make sawdust, takes my mind so much away from all that... That I almost don't mind going back to it the next day

Hope you enjoy it here, there are some nice people and we are willing to discuss all sorts of stuff.

Enjoy your saw, but get some good blades, they do make a huge difference in the quality of your cuts.

Regards,
Marcel

Esc->:wq

[lucky788scroller]

Welcome aboard. The kid turned out great! Congrats. Dale

[Charlie_1]

Welcome to the group
Great cutting job

Charlie

[Minnesota scroller]

Nice portrait Bill. As you can tell from my user name, I'm new at this too. I started out with a few simple designs and then bought a different saw with variable speed and less vibration and thus, my owl was hatched. You can see it under the "my first real challenge" post. This scrolling is very addicting and the members here are first rate. They are very encouraging and helpful. I think this all just adds to the experience.

By the way, did you make your own pattern for this baby or what was your technique. I have yet to attempt a portrait.

Keep up the good work and enjoy.

Mike

[misterunix]

Hello,
Yes that is my son from about a year ago. Besides being a geek I am also a photographer thus I work with photoshop ALOT..

Take a photo and adjust your contrast and brightness. Crop to get just what you need and nothing more. Recheck your contrast then downsize it so the max res in one direction is around 800 to 900 pixels. Then do unsharp mask. Then depending on the photo you may have to ditch a color or 2 then run your stamp filter. Adjust to your liking. I've done this many times for people wanting tattoos and it works great for that so I thought it should work for scrolling as well. As with tattoos I believe it best to crop the photo while its still large and then downsize it to the lower res. Get rid of all the elements you don’t need before you strip away pixels.

If you don’t have photoshop send me a photo and Ill see if I cant get something useful out of it.

[minowevie]

Hi Bill and wellcome to the group. Wow i can see why your wife lost it. that is great. not only did you do a good cutting but to put the pattern that you made to use is pretty cool too. someday i will learn how to do that. lol. you say you was looking for a late 1700 pattern of a candale holder. did i get that right. well here is a link to some great patterns. if it is allowed. first he has lots of great patterns. and a great web sight to learn from. http://www.scrollsaws.com and another is http://www.peculearfretworks.com also and this one will send you a free cataloge . www.wildwooddesigns.com there is so many more. you can also get free patterns from lots of sorces. also this is one that has a great web sight to learn from too. and he is a real good man to know. good friend. and willing to help with blade impho. Mike at Flying Dutchman http://www.mikesworkshop.com/blades.htm hope this will get you started in the right derection. i know it did me. there is lots more. your new friend Evie