wanting to upgrade my hegner advice please

[mac1012]

hi i have a hegner base model which has serverd me well over the past two years , in the new year i will be making my rocking horses out of solid pine and i am wanting a saw with a bit more ooomph ,

i have a few choices a hegner mulitcut 2s 660 pounds single speed (gulp) i doont mind paying this if i think im going to get more bang for my buck , but dont wanna pay money for a saw thats similar to one i have now i been looking at the axminster awfs 18 which has similar spec to a hegner 2s but as someone was selling one on here to upgrade to a hegner not sure if thats going to be any good

the excalibur have had a lot of negative feed back on here although on paper they look good i know the newer models are not as good as the green older ones.

so what can i upgrade too ??

any feedback from pepole who have any of these saws would be great

mark

 

[marcros]

Mark,

without going back over old posts, it may have been asked before, but does it need to be a scroll saw? If you are stack cutting the pine, could you not use a small bandsaw with appropriate blade? The radia are not that tight are they and if people can do bandsaw boxes I would have thought that your horses would be possible.

Mark

 

[mac1012]

hi i have got a axminster base model band saw which i use for the rockers mainly my blade selection wasnt good last time as i cant get tight enough radius it was 1/2 inch blade but i cant get to cut as tight as some people i need to learn a bit more i find the scroll saw quicker and easier than the bandsaw if im honest if i got a course blade in the hegner if i have coarse blade in bandsaw i dont see top get good enough results im thinking of template routering to finish them if i could get a tight enough radius for the head etc then yes i would go down the bandsaw route but i dont seenm to be able to get it to do what i want it to do !

mark

 

[Chippygeoff]

Hi Mark. Sadly there is very little out there thats any good. I have heard that the AWFS 18 is a good saw but many people that have bought them have had to do a lot of filing as some of the castings have rough edges and some have had bad cuts to their hands. The spec seems the same as the Hegner 2S but I doubt if the overall quality is as good as the Hegner. Having said that there are a lot of happy people out there that bought them. I feel with the mass produced saws from the far east there will always be problems with them and the main problems seem to be centred around the clamping system. I feel for best results a cast iron saw table is a lot better than an aluminium one so its something to consider when buying a new saw. The top of the range hegner would be nice for you, 22inch throat, cast iron table, 1750 speed but then you are looking at a grand and I think that is to much money to spend on a scroll saw.

With your rocking horses have you tried using a Flying Dutchman ultra reverse number 9 blade, These would cut your pine at a good rate and leave a super smooth finish to the sides. Also the NRG reverse blades from Hegner are quite good. I have just got some and I find them okay cutting my 18mm hardwoods.

 

[Scrollerman]

Hi Mark,

If you want a saw with ooomph then look no further than a Delta Q3 !
You can pick these up on Ebay for less than £200 and they have much more ooomph than any saw mentioned here.
The Q3 is a 'C' arm saw type and has a much more aggressive cutting action compared to the run-of-the-mill parallel arm type.
This results in a faster cutting action because of it's geometry.

For more information look at the 'About Saws' section on the left hand menu on the following site :

http://www.scrollsaws.com/

Having used many different scrollsaws, most of which have been the parallel type, I can say without prejudice that a 'C' arm saw is the fastest cutting saw I have used.

Scrollerman