Recent content by JohnBailey

Depends.. Are you intending to cut while the lathe is rotating? In which case, none of them. Japanese saws have very hard very thin flexible blades. You would ruin it with the heat alone. An old dovetail saw or similar off ebay would be a better option. Cheap and nasty is fine. If you do...

I was thinking of using ply, but I only have some fairly nasty stuff at the moment. Good enough for hacking to bits, but not good enough to make anything that I would want to stay out of the bin. And too thick anyway. The perspex was so near the exact thickness I wanted, that it was too good to...

Great stuff Mouse. I bought the handle the day after my saw arrived(finally) Makes a world of difference. Now I only have to figure some good way of replacing the bottom clamp screw. Another modification worth considering is replacing the table insert. Mine was a 3mm deep insert, but the...

Hi Brendan I know the scheme you mean. It is London wide as far as I know, but when I used it years ago, it drove me nuts. I lost count of the times I was waiting hours for the black cab to arrive, if at all. I gave it up when they cut the number of trips to 20 a year or something equally daft...

Yep. Just another few weeks until the SIPs are back in stock, (I hope) so a quick phone call followed by the joys of a wheelchair on public transport and I'll know for sure.

Ahh.. But that's just the picture. Don't pay any attention.. I'm just annoyed that the description didn't match the product. Probably doesn't make much difference to functionality. The place I'm thinking of buying from is only about 4-5 miles away from me, so I may get a cab back there and see...

Or more likely, they get a standard promotion pack which has a set of pictures and some text when the product is launched.But nobody bothers updating it when specifications change. I was looking at the Sealy version's manual, and there are at least two variations shown. One with a cam operated...

Wonderful.. I even checked the description here just before I posted so I didn't mix it up with the dozen or so others. http://www.toolsave-sip.co.uk/product.p ... =sip+01373 Cast iron table mentioned in both the description and the spec. I may look at a few others again.. Thanks for the...

Save your money and go for Inkscape. Same kind of program as Corel, but free. You might also want to look at something like Gimp. A free lower powered alternative to Photoshop. There are a few features in that which make converting photos to line art a bit easier. Both are pretty complex...

Can't speak from personal experience, but pretty much every request for advice gets recommended the SIP that Mouse mentioned as the £100 ish price band. And as there have not been a flurry of posts about how wrong the advice was, It's good enough for me. The model seems to be out of stock at...

Not exactly in the first flushes of youth myself.. :) It is one of those programs where if you need it, nothing else will do. Gimp would be good for bringing down the colour palette so you end up with what is almost a ready made pattern, but for complex shapes you need to get to fit just...

Good luck with Gimp. It can be a bit confusing at times, but it is worth persevering with. And a damn sight cheaper than Photoshop... A couple of video podcasts that are fairly useful are www.meetthegimp.org And Gimp Knowhow on Youtube. Another free program that you might find useful is...

Yep.. It's a pity. I still think there is a definite need for such a resource. But as we seem to be the only ones interested, not gonna happen. Looks like not that many people blow through here, so the few "What saw do I get" posts don't cause problems like similar questions do on other...

They probably are. It's been common practice for far eastern manufacturers to make the same machines for a whole range of customers for some time. It only gets better when you go into the professional grade models. The better brands tend to spend a little extra, and get better quality. Clarke...

Hi All I've been having an interesting if frustrating few weeks of research lately. Who knew buying a saw would be so problematic.. It seems next to impossible to find information on scroll saws. General information.. no problem. Some nice tutorials too. But the manufacturers don't seem to...