So you like scroll sawing or you would like to start scroll sawing. Lets talk about It. Some people think that the scroll saw is fairly new. But it might be a surprise to you that it has been around for hundreds of years. They were called fret saws and they were foot powered. Old world craftsman used these foot powered fret saws to do the beautiful scroll sawing that can still be seen in the old world churches and government buildings. But thats not the whole story. The original scroll sawing was done with the coping saw. that is the u shaped wonder that we used as kids. It was so great because we could cut curves and that opened a whole new woodworking world to us just as it did all those many hundreds of years ago. Some where in the 1500 hundreds a German guy developed fine narrow blades. People started building machines that these blades could be mounted in tush started the scroll saw as we know it today. These machines were peddle, treadle, hand cranked and so on.

On the market today there are two types  the first one we will talk about is the C-arm it has only one pivot point. This makes the blade move in a slight arc as it moves up and down. This causes it to under cut the edges. This is not to bad in thin material but not so good in thicker material. It takes grater skill to get good scroll sawing from this type machine so I would not recommend this type to a beginner.

The other one is called a parallel arm saw. It has two parallel arms with a pivot point in the middle of each arm. They travel in tandem with each other. The two arms are hooked together by a connecting bar at the back of the arms. This lets the blade move up and down in a near perfect vertical cut. I like this type  because we do a lot of scroll sawing in thick stuff. The size is determined by the throat size from the back of the  arm to the blade. So if the distance is 16 inches from blade to back of arm you have a16 inch meachine simple right. You should know that when you go to buy one you don’t need one of those $1500.00 beauties I have used all of them in my 60 years of scroll sawing and guess what the blade goes up down the same on a $200.00 Delta that I run every day for the last 15 years. Don’t get me wrong the expensive saws are great but they don’t make you an expert scroll sawing guy only you can do that practice, practice, practice and you will be a great at it.

Well that is my my article on scroll sawing and how to pick the one that is right for you try as many as you can. Pick one thats right for you. Here at uncle mel’s wood shop we build wooden coin banks and we are scroll sawing every day we have expensive meachines and a good cheap one so it comes down to what you like and can afford. In my next article we will talk about how to start scroll sawing and about how to keep your things working well. Thank you for reading happy scrolling Uncle Mel