Honest John
Established Member
Although I’ve had a scrollsaw in my shop for a number of years I have used it very little and. So can’t claim any major experience, which leads me to my question. I was trying to cut some hard wood about 40mm thick. This is supposed to be within the capabilities of my machine. The wood was Indian Rosewood and was quite gummy. I used a new Olsen blade the coarsest I had which I think was a number 7. The cut was painfully slow to the point of boredom. Searching round my workshop I found a packet of Rexon pinned blades from a machine I owned many years ago. No idea what the number of these were but they much coarser than the Olsen 7s. I found that I could push the pins out with pliers, don’t know if that’s normal, but I was able then to mount the blade in my painless saw. The cut was still tedious but it was achievable. That particular project is finished but I couldn’t stop thinking about what I can expect from a scroll saw. With that thought in mind and before I put my machine back in the corner where I store it, I tried another cut with this same blade, I tried it on a scrap of 2x1 White Oak. Cross cutting the 1 inch thick section was slow but better than the thicker Rosewood. What I found was odd was that I had great difficulty in scrolling curves with this blade, although it was not too bad in a straight line. What blades would you think I should be using for cutting thicker section hard wood ? Although I haven’t tried it, I have seen YouTube’s where people have stacked pen blanks and cut wiggly lines down the length of them then mixed up the cut sections back together. Clearly the cut has been plumb top to bottom or the sections would not fit together in a new order. On that basis I would not have expected my 40mm thick Rosewood to cut well. 2 stacked pen blanks would be about that thick.
Sorry to have rambled on but I’m curious about what I can expect from this machine. For completeness my machine is a reasonably powerful variable speed jobbie branded Peugeot. Looks to be identical to a Rexon I briefly owned but was stollen before I ever used it!
Sorry to have rambled on but I’m curious about what I can expect from this machine. For completeness my machine is a reasonably powerful variable speed jobbie branded Peugeot. Looks to be identical to a Rexon I briefly owned but was stollen before I ever used it!