Type of wood to use for portrait project.

[Dabur]

Hi,

I am very new to the world of scroll sawing (and woodworking in general). I borrowed my father’s scroll saw a couple of months ago for a small project I was working on, since then I have been looking into what you can make with a scroll saw, and I am amazed at what can be done with it, very versatile tool, wish I got one years ago!

I am currently working on a pattern for cutting out a portrait of a tiger (not sure if there is different terminology for that type of work). There will be some very intricate cuts involved so hopefully I am not pushing myself to fast. But what type of wood should I use? I have been practising on 6mm plywood, but should I cut the main piece out of plywood? I do not know too much about the various types of wood. Would plywood be considered a “cheap” wood to use? Ultimately it would be nice to be able to sell some pieces if the finish is good enough, but I am not sure if people would consider buying something cut from plywood? What wood have others used for a similar project? Also any suggestions available on what thickness of wood be ideal for this type of project? Ultimately I will want to stack the wood so I am cutting out more than one copy at the same time so I guess the wood should not be too thick. Is there any ideal thickness for this type of project or does it just come down to personal preference?

Thanks in advance for any advice

 

[novocaine]

difficult question to answer, but will say if you intend to try and make money from it, give up now, it's a dead end.

personally I'd go with something tight grained and of the colour you want, so beech, birch, walnut, sapele, decent oak. all very nice to cut and would do what you want. working width, 5-10mm.

nothing wrong with plywood, and much easier to work with and not have to worry about grain and the like, use decent "baltic birch" type and it can look great.

 

[Dabur]

Thanks Novocaine, I will look into some of those other woods. Will definitely look at Baltic Birch only used the scroll saw with Pine and Plywood so might be best to stick with the Ply at the moment.

Any idea of some decent suppliers of Wood? The standard type of places like B & Q, Wickes etc seem quite limited.

Out of interest why would trying to sell them be a dead end? No demand for that type of wood work? Loads of people already trying to sell the same type of work?

 

[novocaine]

avoid the box stores, look for real timber merchants (you're a bit far from me so can't really suggest anywhere). wickes and B&Q have there place in the world, but what they sell isn't the best for this sort of work.

there are a few folks on here that have turned scrollsaws in to job, most will tell you that the money is from small cheap items that can be made quickly (think decorations) instead of complex, multi hour work. think about it, if it takes you 5 hours to cut 1 piece and you sell it for going rates (lets say 40 quid on a good day) that's not an overly good profit, so even if you stack cut, you still have all the time prepping then finishing the work. you'll also have to set up a stall or some such, that costs, so does getting to it and back along with other costs, it soon makes it a very fine line between profit and loss. what you also find is most people look at something you've taken hours over and say 1 of 2 things, "I can do that" or "I saw that cheaper on Ebay" obviously there are those that buy it too, but the former far outweighs the latter.

obviously that is your call, just be aware of it.

 

[Dabur]

Its only a vague thought on possibly selling things I make, your advise is very sound, I take it on board.

Will give the tiger profile a go as mainly doing it to see if I can and for practice. I shall certainly give some thought to some smaller pieces in the mean time.

 

[AES]

Dabur, welcome to the world of scroll sawing, you'll find it fascinating and highly addictive - you have been warned!

I'm not into selling stuff myself, but the info that novocaine has posted regarding selling work is in accord with the views of many other members posting here on that general subject over the couple of years I've been a member. HOWEVER, if you do want to look into that whole subject a bit deeper, do a particular search for various posts by 2 members here - Chippygeoff and Claymore. Amongst other things they both make the point that it IS possible to earn money from the scroll saw - perhaps NOT a real living exactly, but by carefully thinking about where and what you are, you may well be able to find a niche to exploit, and with some profit too - in a post not so long ago, Claymore made that point particularly well. And Chippygeoff has in the past had quite a lot to say about the extra costs involved in selling your work - costs that may not be immediately obvious to a beginner.

Re wood, I can't help you there very much either, but a number of members have found good wood by checking out local charity shops, second hand shops, and sometimes, rubbish tips, for small pieces of "good wood" (NOT chipboard!) furniture that has been chucked out.

For ply, I 2nd the Baltic Birch Ply that novocaine suggests. Being almost "white" and without voids and blemishes (for the best grade stuff), it both paints and stains well. A good source for thin ply stock (say about 10 mm max) in small sheet sizes (but it IS expensive compared with buying bigger sheets from a proper timber sheet merchant) will be wherever you can find a model aero shop locally - note that you are NOT looking for what they call "Lite Ply", but for the genuine, multi-lamination birch stuff.

HTH

AES

 

[Buffalo Chas]

Hi Dabur and welcome to the forum. Regarding your tiger portrait I would suggest you use 3mm or 4mm Baltic Birch ply stacked 2 or 3 up. By stacking the ply it actually makes it easier to cut thin ply as the thickness gives more resistance to the blade and therefore gives you more control over the cut. When the portrait is cut it can be mounted on another piece of ply painted black, perhaps of the same thickness if you are mounting it in a frame or thicker if you are leaving it free mounted like a plaque. You may get better idea of what I mean if you check out the wolf portrait I posted on here a couple of months ago in the post ''First pics''. It's cut from 3mm Baltic Birch and mounted on 3mm ply painted black.

Hope this is of some help.

Happy scrolling.

Charley
mod edit to add link post1122569.html?hilit=wolf#p1122569

 

[Dabur]

Thank you AES and Buffalo for the replies, sorry for the late reply did not have time to check yesterday.

Baltic Birch it is then!

AES - I had not even considered looking in charity shops and tips etc for wood so will keep my eyes open and I will certainly check out the posts by the other members.

Buffalo - makes perfect sense especially after seeing the pic, exactly the type of finish I am thinking off. Whether my tiger will look as polished as your wolf does only time will tell, if i get anywhere near that quality I will be happy.

 

[Dabur]

Hi Again,

Well 6 weeks later (work and 2 young children, not much time for anything!) I have finally finished the pattern for the tiger and cut part of it as a test. I cut it out of 9mm ply because when I get round to the final piece I am going to stack 2 lots of 4mm birch ply. Initially the portrait was going to be small enough to cut on my scroll saw which has a 16 inch throat but after creating the pattern and printing to the max size of wood I could use on my scroll saw a lot of the detail was just not going to be possible so that gave me 2 options change a lot of the pattern or go down the route of spiral blades......

I think they are great and the reason for the test piece was to practice with the spiral blade because I have not used them before, not had a great deal of practice with flat blades to be honest so was somewhat apprehensive about them especially after reading various opinions about them on line.

Any way on to the point of my post. I have attached a picture of the test piece and really wanted some opinions from people far more experienced than me. Constructive criticism really. Not sure how to explain it but a lot of the cuts are not perfect (not that I was expecting them to be using spirals for the first time), by that I mean if I cut a curve using a flat blade it would look very smooth, on the attached they do still look smooth until you zoom in a lot. I appreciate that is one of the perils of using a spiral blade in that it cuts on all sides so even the slightest movement of the line would cause cuts where you do not want them. I guess what I am asking is that after a lot of practice (however long that may be) would you expect a curve cut in the wood using spirals to be as smooth and as consistent as a cut made with flat blades? hope I am making sense!

And finally, am I expecting to much using a No 1 spiral blade with 9mm thick plywood? I ask because I have broken loads of blades! The test piece measures 42 cm by 30 cm and I must have gone through around 15 blades!! Something is wrong! I have read up on why blades break, there are so many variables and I have tried changing certain elements, such as blade tension, cutting speed etc but they still break so I am assuming I need to use larger blades? Having said that tried using some No 3 and they still broke too. Should I be using No 5 on 9mm plywood? Hope not as they seem far to big. There seems to be a wealth of info online about flat blades but limited on spiral blades.

 

[linkshouse]

Well my goodness Dabur, if that's your first attempt I'm looking forward to seeing the stuff you do next.

As to blade life, I very rarely use spiral blades but spiral or flat No1 is a very fine blade and to be honest for that amount of work I don't think you've done too badly. Now I have to say that is based on my own experience and when I hear some people here relate how long their blades last I am in awe.

As to smoothness of cut I can't image that however careful one is that it is possible to get as smooth a cut with a spiral blade as with a flat blade. But, I wouldn't beat yourself up about it...

I think we all suffer from over harsh personal criticism. We see things in our work that other people just don't see. For a start they're not looking for faults, secondly they're typically not looking that closely. Take your Tiger as an example - you move in close and examine all the cuts and see the rough edges, everyone else (except perhaps a fellow woodworker) stands back and see's a Tiger.

On the subject of making money (sorry, I seem to have come to this thread late).

I would concur with what most others have said. Don't expect to make a living at it. You will never cover your time at even the minimum wage. Take a look at how long it took you to make the Tiger work out who much that would be at an hourly rate of say even £10/hour plus material, plus blades, plus wear and tear, add a bit on for profit and do you think you could sell the Tiger for that amount?

However you can make money, and you should try and sell your items even if only for the "confidence boost" that making sales gives you. After all, friends and family will always say how good your work is, when people part with hard cash then you know they mean it!

Even if you only make enough money to cover your material costs then at least if funds your hobby.

Sorry, slightly longer reply than I intended.

Keep up the good work and keep posting you're work here so that we can enjoy it.

Regards

Phill

 

[Dabur]

Thanks Phil, I must say I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out in the end I will post the final piece when it is finished (whenever that will be!)

As you say its very easy to be critical of your own work, I was getting very frustrated if the cut I was making came of the line because you would assume you have to follow the line perfectly. However after watching numerous you tube videos and reading about using a scroll saw, some very experienced scrollers have used the phrase (or something similar) "The line on a pattern should be treated as a guide, not something you have to follow 100% perfectly" with that in mind cutting the pattern and veering of the line slightly suddenly becomes less catastrophic!

In terms of making money out of the scroll saw it is probably a bit of a pipe dream as I am now learning how long these things take to cut. The thought of making money was the thought of a new person thinking wouldn't it be great to make some money out of this. I agree it would be difficult to make a living but fingers crossed in the future I can make some additional income from it. The main thing is I am enjoying using the a scroll saw a lot and have countless projects in mind of what I would like to make.

 

[linkshouse]

As you say its very easy to be critical of your own work, I was getting very frustrated if the cut I was making came of the line because you would assume you have to follow the line perfectly. However after watching numerous you tube videos and reading about using a scroll saw, some very experienced scrollers have used the phrase (or something similar) "The line on a pattern should be treated as a guide, not something you have to follow 100% perfectly" with that in mind cutting the pattern and veering of the line slightly suddenly becomes less catastrophic!

And, no-one else knows where the original line was once the piece is cut anyway.

Unless, you are doing word art. Everyone knows what shape letters are meant to be so you have to be pretty careful with lettering.

Regards

Phill

 

[donwatson]

A very nice first piece Dabur, looking forward to more from you.
Loads of useful advice on here, just keep practicing.

take care
Don W

 

[AES]

If it helps at all Dabur, I agree 100% with all the points linkshouse has already made.

We do all tend to see our own faults more than anyone else (we make them after all)! But zooming in on your 1st attempt I didn't see anything that was screaming out FAULT. On the contrary, to me it looks just like what it's supposed to be, a very nice outline of a tiger's head.

As you say, the "problem" with spiral blades is exactly the same as their advantage - no matter which way you move the blade, it cuts, so there's no "resting" time on any cut until you've found a "hole"!

I've heard someone on this Forum describing spiral blades as "the invention of the devil", so not having tried them before myself, I bought a cheapo packet. At first I found them MOST uncomfortable to use, precisely because there's no place in the cut where you can stop the cut while you change your hand position for example. But I guess that with more practice one could get used to that (personally I haven't tried them all that much).

But to state the obvious once more, they will cut in any direction, so it's probably worth while to keep practising with them - I seem to recall seeing somewhere on the net that someone who shows excellent scroll work uses spiral blades exclusively.

So keep trying mate, your first attempt is VERY encouraging indeed. But again as has already been said, I think a size 1 blade is almost certainly too fine, even on thin ply (don't forget that with ply, the glue holding the laminations all together tends to be harder than the parent wood, and probably makes more dust for the blade to clear away than the parent wood does too).

Re selling stuff, I think that linkshouse has again hit the nail on the head. But Claymore of this parish made an excellent point on this subject a while back too.

To save you searching for it, in essence what he said was you need to look for something that is particular/special to where you live or what you do (Claymore lives near a hurting bird and animal park, so does a lot to suit them) To start with he simply made something that he THOUGHT might appeal to them - a bird Intarsia if I recall correctly - and then banged on their door one day to with his work under his arm to ask "whatcha fink o' this then mate?" Not surprisingly when you see his work, they almost bit his hand off, and so it's gone on from there. Similar story with his motorbike Intarsias.

In the same vein, I live near the equivalent of what would in UK be the local County Town, and a particularly important "symbol" is the still extant water tower that was built into what was once the city wall. It now stands at the top of the local shopping High Street and it's immediately recognisable, as well as being incorporated into the town's own flag. As there's also a sort of tourist office here, I reckon that if I wanted to sell scroll saw work (I don't!!) then it would probably be pretty easy to work up a simple-ish Intarsia of that remaining wall section with tower and then go and knock on their door.

What Claymore was saying is that you need to look for something like that (not necessarily geographical, it could be oriented to a specific interest like fishing for example, if that's an interest of yours). Then capitalise on it.

But again, just as linkshouse has said, especially with a family to support, don't expect to make a proper living out of it. But having a hobby that gives you pleasure AND which supports itself financially (at least as far as materials go) is not bad at all. That contrasts very favourably with, for example, golf.

Keep up the good work mate, well done.

AES

 

[Dabur]

Thank you for the positive comments Don and AES.

Your post was very informative AES. I have just had a nose at some of Claymores intarsia. You peaked my interest when you mentioned motorbikes lol. That is some very impressive work by Claymore, love the motorbike ones. You got me thinking that I could do a similar thing as the tiger but with a motorbike . Just googled for some nice pictures of a Vincent Black Shadow, think that would look great. Anyway getting ahead of my self, got to finish the tiger first and then I want to attempt a portrait of my son and daughter, I hope they will forgive me if they don't turn out great because they are going on the wall regardless

 

[Dabur]

Sorry to bring this post up again but I have been thinking about the finish to apply to the Birch wood once completed and the best way to go about it. All your help as been invaluable so far so thought I would ask some more questions because the last thing I want to do is make some school boy error which mucks everything up (especially with the amount of time and effort I have put into this!)

I have been searching the forums for the best finish to apply to the wood when it is complete. There appears to be countless options, but I am thinking lemon oil or some kind of clear acrylic based sealer, or possibly some bees wax to give a nice shine. Does the wood need to be finished (other than sanding) or is it a personal preference? The final piece will be in a frame with a glass front so the wood obliviously wont be exposed to any elements. I have purchased some Birch ply and it looks very nice as it is so I am thinking of leaving it as is but would applying some sort of sealer bring out the grain more?

Assuming I do apply some kind of sealer to the wood at what stage would it be best to apply?. Once the wood has been cut it is going to very difficult to apply anything to the wood so the only other choice is to do it before cutting? I will be stacking 3 layers of 4mm Birch. Would the finish be ruined on the stacked pieces? Also the top piece would have the pattern on it. I won't be gluing the pattern directly to the top piece but will put a layer of masking tape on top and then the pattern on top of that. When taking the masking tape of the top layer would that ruin the finish? I would not have thought so as masking tape is not too sticky. I'm sure you have all done something very similar before so would appreciate your advice.

 

[AES]

Hullo Darbur.

Here I'm going to be of VERY little help, simply because I have little knowledge and experience. There are others on this section who have FAR more knowledge and experience than I do, and it may well also be worth repeating your post on the separate Finishing Section here. Everyone here is very helpful.

A couple of points FWTW:

Personally I find the "almost featureless white" of birch ply a bit bland for my taste. BUT a lot depends on what the subject is, your own personal taste, and the taste of the receiver (assuming it's a present, or for sale).

As far as batch cutting goes, I would suggest that after sanding and de-dusting (tack cloth) you simply give one, perhaps two coats of clear acrylic varnish. BUT this could have an adverse affect on whatever finish you use afterwards (I know you say you want to apply a basic finish to the ply before cutting, but this may not be such a good idea, depending on the size/s of the piece/s remaining after cutting, and on whatever you decide the final finish will be). But certainly varnish will help with the application and holding power of the masking tape. But provided the ply is clean and dust-free, masking tape should stick well, especially if you wrap all 3 pieces up into a "parcel" before you start cutting.

Beyond those points I have no suggestions, sorry, but I'm sure someone with MUCH better knowledge than I will be along soon.

Good luck.

AES

 

[linkshouse]

I'm no expert either but I can tell you what I do.

I don't apply any finish prior to cutting and I think your point about stack cutting is bang inasmuch as any finish that was applied would just be damaged.

Once the parts are cut is where I probably depart from the norm.

I suspect most people apply a coat od sanding sealer and the do a very fine sanding (perhaps even just a rub with wire wool) and then apply wax.

I apply a liberal blathering (technical Yorkshire term) of my own blend of 1/3 boiled linseed oil, 1/3 varnish, and 1/3 whites sprits. If the piece is small or thin I may even dunk it.

Then I leave it for 30 minutes or so and then wipe it down with either paper towel or a scrap piece of material (old t-short etc.).

Leave it for a bit then possible give it another wipe if any liquid has come back to the surface.

Then I leave it overnight to dry.

After that I give it another coat of the mixture, this time applied using fine wire wool to remove any nibs brought up by the firt application.

Same procedure with regard to leaving it for 30 minutes or so then wiping it down.

Leave it overnight again and then depending on the piece and its final use apply a coat of Chestnut WoodWax and polish.

I know this is long winded for some but only time wise not work wise and it does bring out the grain nicely.

Hope this helps.

Phill

 

[Dabur]

Thank you both.

I think I will go down the route of sanding the wood before stacking without applying any kind of finish at that point because of the risk of ruining it. I will apply a finish after it has been cut, with any luck I will be able to apply the finish by spraying it on using a paint sprayer, I think it will be possible after reading on line about it. It is going to be difficult to apply by another means after the wood has been cut. I will do some testing before hand!

Phil - I shall test your process on a scrap piece of Birch to see how it turns out. I have read similar processes elsewhere and the finish is likely to be worth the wait.