Christmas and New Year's Wishes

[lastvautour]

I hope you all had a good Christmas. Santa brought a 1/72 Lockheed Super Constellation for me and a new digital camera for Deb.

I pass along my wishes for a peaceful 2009 and good health to all.

Keep you blade sharp
Lou

[Oceaneer99]

Lou,

Thank you for the Christmas greetings.  We had our ninth day of snow today here in Seattle.  It is very, very unusual for snow to last more than a few days.  There are a lot of hills here, and they are fairly difficult to drive at the moment.  I finally drove to the grocery store today (we'd been hiking out for supplies until today), and only the main roads were passable without chains.  It was fairly warm today (just above freezing), so the roads were covered with deep slush and very slippery.  It reminded me of the "slush season" of New England.

I made a few last-minute wooden photo ornaments and started work on some wooden toy rocketships, but haven't been able to work on any models.  I did have to rescue my scroll saw.  Water had condensed on the garage skylight and dripped onto the cast iron table of the scroll saw.  I found it the next day, red with rust.  I had to sand and steel wool the rust off, then oil and wax the table.  What a mess!

Merry Christmas and a good 2009 to all of you.

Garet

[cliff strachan]

Hi Garet and all  the SMM gang.

Snow can be fun. For a while. But when coupled with hills, driving, alternative melting and freezing, all the fun soon disappears. Better to have it with sunny Skies and flat surfaces. But then we can't always have things just as we want.

Good luck Garet. And to all a very Happy New Year.

Cliff

[Oceaneer99]

Except for huge piles of snow in the medians and the parking lots, most of the area is out of the worst of the snow, and I can drive without chains. 

I can't complain too much, because I know my neighbors to the north get a lot worse weather.  As I was standing in line at the Post Office last week, I overheard a young man on his cell phone: "The flight was canceled, but we've been rescheduled.... I'm flying into Edmonton, and then it's a two hour drive north to his dad's cabin.... Yeah, Mom, I know it's cold in Edmonton."

Garet

[cliff strachan]

Hi Lou again,
Saw the news last night. How are you guys making out down there? That's one big bash of snow you got in the last couple of days. About 40 cm or something like that with 100km winds! Good Grief! And Good Luck!

Cliff.

[spider web]

A belated Happy New Year to you all also !

Garet: What brand of scroll saw do you have ?
I experienced the same thing from a roof leak a few years back which prompted me to place a large plastic trash bag over my scroll saw at the end of a session.
Rust on a cast iron table is not a problem.  From time to time I just give my table a quick wipe of linseed oil.

I have a HAWK 220 scroll saw.

On January 1, I stripped down and rebuilt my computer system by adding a backup hard drive and deleted a lot of out of date software. 

I also went into the shop and cut a lot of bass wood and clear pine blanks including strip wood for the solid models I plan to carve.

I trust you folks got all the new tools you wanted for christmas.

Have a great carving day !

Jim

[Oceaneer99]

Jim,

I have read that the Hawk is a nice scroll saw.  I have a low-end Delta that was probably designed for much lighter work than I've used it for.  It was on sale and I bought it right about the time I took up solid models.  I cut the fuselage of my P-40 out with a hand saw, but decide I'd make a lot more models if I had a band or scroll saw. 

I took off the upper blade clamp and made a stronger replacement (though I took a look at it, and I've bent the new one, so I may have to drill out for a larger bolt).  I also took off the unusable blade guard (okay on a scroll saw) and installed my own blower, which is powered by an air pump I bought at a thrift store.  I thought it was an aquarium pump, though it was impressively beefy and had multiple flow settings.  When I got it home, I realized that it was actually a pump from a device for nursing mothers!  I took it apart and flipped the check valves around, but did have a good laugh about that.  I still need to put in some new arm bearings, as one got scored right after I bought the saw.  I keep it well-greased in the mean time, and it seems to be holding out.

I usually use Olsen thick-wood blades, though have used some cut-off bandsaw blades, and switch to typical fine scroll saw blades when I'm cutting out stabilizers and the like.

As you indicated, the surface rust wasn't a problem on the cast iron table.  I used some steel wool and scotch-brite pads to get it shiny again, then coated it with paste wax.

What do you use to saw out your blanks and strip wood?

Santa didn't bring me any tools, but my brother did give me a subscription to Make! magazine, and I made a few more chisels and sharpened my planes over the holiday.

Garet

[scottzepher]

A Very Happy New Year indeed!
Since we're swapping stories, allow me to add my own.  My Craftsman scroll saw was my pride and joy, and I thought it couldn't be safer sitting in the bottom of my metal wardrobe-turned-tool cabinet. 
Cringing yet?  Keep reading . . .
What our landlord failed to mention was the dreadful humidity problem that plagued the basement where I set up shop.   I learned just how bad the problem was when I discovered my saw sitting in about an inch-and-a-half of water!  Thankfully, they were still building Craftsman scroll saws with cast iron bases (don't know what they use now), and once it dried out, it worked beautifully, and still does to this day.
Just a few weeks ago, South-Central PA had a regular roller-coaster
of temperatures, once again causing havoc with humidity levels.  This time, I found a thick layer of condensation on the table surface of my band saw.  I managed to get it dried off, and rubbed mineral oil into the surface.   

[R.F.Bennett]

Turtle Wax Gentlemen. I used to cut a lot of wet wood in the shop and T-Wax is the answer. Unlike oils it does not remain sticky and grab sawdust. You can put it on your painted surfaces too make them easier to dust and on your blades to keep them from rusting. After you clean your cast iron (Aluminum too) clean it with lacquer thinner or alcohol  very well. Then apply several coats of T-wax according to instructions, dry and rub off between each coat. Works well for hand tools too, not on plastic though.