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I am fed up with my cheap Stanley plastic mitre box. It is OK for the basic stuff I do with it but it makes a horrible scraping sound against the bench top and I don't trust it with clamps. What recommendations do workshoppers have for mitre boxes and is it sensible simply to make one by hand...

The Black and Decker KW900EKA seems to be heavily discounted at the moment - Big Red Toolbox has it for £46, for example. I need a (first) router primarily for box-making - rebates, grooving, roundovers and possibly cutting circular workpieces (for jigsaw puzzles). Is this a good buy or are...

What do Excalibur users recommend as a stand for the Ex30? How much space is needed between the feet?

As many people on this forum know, I built a working scrollsaw out of Meccano which cuts real (but very carefully chosen) plywood. This weekend - Saturday and Sunday - I'll be demonstrating it at the "Magic of Meccano" show at Kew Bridge Steam Museum. http://www.kbsm.org/ for details. It is a...

Here's a new piece of work... And here's the back - There are 217 pieces plus six large whimsies - including the three bears! Although normally I'd cut the whimsies into pieces of about the same size as the others, this time it seemed better to leave them as they are. That is just over 2.5...

I didn't know this had been put on YouTube until somebody mentioned it to me - here is a short clip of my Meccano scroll saw in action, at the Magic of Meccano show earlier this year at Kew Bridge Steam Museum. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rza9Uif69wo

Here's another jigsaw puzzle. This one has 201 pieces in a puzzle 6.75" x 11" which is about 2.7 pieces per square inch - quite delicate, to go with the fairy theme. The picture is "Oh! They Do Get Away Down Under Ground", an illustration by Warwick Goble. And here is the back, flipped to...

It has been a while since I posted any work. Here is my latest puzzle: the picture is "The New Necklace" by William McGregor Paxton. There are about 160 pieces, including seven figurals or whimsies. Here is the back of the puzzle (flipped so it corresponds to the front) to make the cut easier...

I'll be making jigsaw puzzles with my infamous home-made Meccano scrollsaw this weekend at The Magic of Meccano exhibition at Kew Bridge Steam Museum in Lodnon - http://www.kbsm.org/ - this Saturday and Sunday (18th/19th). This is therefore a shameless plug for a great day out with working...

Yay! I sold a jigsaw puzzle at the weekend, the first bona fide folding stuff that I've got for a puzzle. Astoundingly it was made with my infamous Meccano fretsaw, and bought by a chap who wants it for a toy museum in Holland as part of a Meccano exhibit he curates. Isn't it a grand feeling...

Talk on the forum of scrollsaw shows reminded me of this pic. I have spent almost as much time cutting with my home-made Meccano saw as with my Axminster of late, demonstrating it by cutting plywood puzzles of old Meccano Magazine covers with their evocative period artwork. This portly fellow...

The talk about jigsaw puzzles reminded me that I haven't posted any new ones for a while. Here is Tulips: This was another calendar picture. It is about 10.5" x 8.5" and has 225 pieces, including nine whimsies. The cut is quite intricate, and becomes extreme in some places - overdone, I...

Here is a new puzzle. This one is a Maxfield Parrish painting called "Love's Pilgrimage" part of a set of murals he painted for a rather swish boardroom. It's taken from a calendar. I have been trying to cut smaller pieces recently. This one has 132 pieces and measures a little under 12" x...

Following on from a thread In Another Place concerning the relatively high price of scrollsaw foot switches, can a sewing machine foot switch or some such be pressed into service? Has anybody tried something like this? Chris

Here is my latest puzzle. This has been a minor disaster but a good learning curve! The problems all stem from using, for the first time, a 3mm light plywood of the sort used for r/c aircraft models. This cut so easily that I felt I had very little control using FD puzzle blades, and after a...

I finished my latest project today. A friend is recovering from an illness and I thought she might like some flowers: There are 149 pieces, and the picture was taken from a calendar. It took me over an hour to put it back together in order to sand the back and photograph it, even though I cut...

I was looking for puzzle-quality woods and found a supplier of 5mm Japanese plywood in small puzzle-size pieces. But there seems to be very little information out there on the Web about Japanese plywood generally. What woods are usually used, what sort of quality should one expect? The site in...

I'm very new to woodworking, done very little apart from making up model railway baseboards and tables, that sort of thing. But I've been tempted to try my hand at jigsaw puzzle cutting for a while now and finally an unexpected - but modest - cheque has pushed me over the edge... Reading the...