![]() Even though harder metals like steel are harder to work with than softer metals, it is still possible with practice. Yes, the scroll saw can cut metals such as cold-rolled steel, aluminum, bronze, copper, and brass. You can use your scroll saw to slice through metal. But it might be worth considering.While the scroll saw is most often used for woodworking, it may be utilized to cut other materials with suitable blades and approaches. It isn't the same as doing all the finger shoulders with a blade, as it requires that you cut the shoulders with a tenon saw. The idea is that you use the copying saw to do what it does best: make curved cuts.īuilding a Handmade Try Square, Popular Woodworking This allows you to rough out the waste pretty quickly, but you still have the chance to make nice tight joinery. Repeat for the other side of the mortise. One starts at the mark on the end and, instead of trying to follow the mark perfectly, slices into the waste until you reach the bottom mark. There is a technique where dovetails or bridle mortises are roughed out with a coping saw. ![]() I will add that, further to my comment about coping saws higher up, I suppose you could try to use your scroll saw in one particular similar manner. This way, depending on the nature of the errors, at least the errors tend to match. And a common technique for fingers is to cut the joints for mating pieces at the same time, just offset by a single finger and flipped. If you insist on using a scroll saw you might want to look into making a jig or fence of some kind. You only need a few simple tools easily found online or in your local big box store. Or, change tack a little and switch to traditional dovetail joinery using hand tools. Obviously, this is a lot of overhead if you just want to mess about a bit in your shop. My recommendation would be to invest in a table saw or even a router (if you want to make a lot of finger joints and really get into mechanized woodworking). But it is a compromise finger joints are never as strong as dovetails or other joinery (though often strong enough with modern glues). They really shine when you have to make production amounts of joints (often with relatively cheap material), and you don't necessarily want to hire or train someone with skill in joinery. So, you could research how to tune your saw for the best straight line cutting, but it might be a bit of a fool's errand.įinger joints are really a product of mechanized woodworking. Anyway, whenever I hear about that I always think "why not use a nice sharp chisel?") This is sort of similar but the control you have with a hand coping saw is miles from a scroll saw even though the mechanics of the cutting is similar. (It occurs to me that I know some folks will use a coping saw to clean up dovetails. As mentioned, even a band saw with a fence is not going to make for great joinery cuts! And as soon as you start pushing material, it is going to want to wander. Regardless of what you see on the internet, even the best-tuned scroll saw will have a fair amount of wobble and vibration at speed. I have watched a couple videos of people demoing that cheap saw, but I was not able to replicate their results.Īs suggested in the comments, it is going to be a challenge to do any repeatable joinery cuts with a scroll saw. actively bending the blade, which is obviously curving the cut in the sideways dimension, and probably not good for the machine & blade. Also when I saw I was leaving the drawn line, the only thing that seemed to help to get back onto it was not just trying to correct the angle, but also actually moving the workpiece's cutting line out of the virtual vertical line between the two mounting pins of the blade, i.e. The blade seems reasonably tensioned and I don't think the machine warrants more tension, but still, the blade bends (torsion) rather easily, making the process rather wobbly. More of a irregularly modulated sine curve with weak amplitude, but not weak enough. I was unable to get anywhere near a straight cut. ![]() A piece of 20x20 cm², I cut off a 3cm "strip", drew a line across with ruler + pencil before. So I tried to cut my usual material, pine or spruce, 18mm thick. ![]() electric jigsaw or hand-held circular saw) would translate to more precision, for things like "simple" finger joints, or cutting pars for smaller wooden cases such as for DIY loudspeaker enclosures and what have you. I mainly bought it as I thought finer cuts (vs. The manual says it can cut not too hard wood up to 25mm thickness. While they are not the best build quality, some people on youtube apparently are happy enough with it and manage to get the results they desire. I have a cheap electric scroll saw, one of those Scheppach for ~ 100 EUR. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |