Feel free to show off"... that's a dangerous thing to say, yukon I think most of us have at least one passion we'll talk about until people's vision begins to blur, if unduly encouraged-- and this is one of mine. Here are a few pics. It's all old work, I'm afraid-- I made the conscious decision when my second child was born to spend less time in the shop and more with them (they're ages 2 and 5 currently) A good trade, I think, but I've got enough jobs piling up now that I really need to dust off the saw and get moving again...

I practice a very uncommon scroll saw technique known as Pictorial Segmentaion. Saying that puts me at the point where I need to either stop talking immediately or publish my dissertation, so I'll take pity on you and just post the pics. If anyone's interested in learning more, shoot me an email at zarling.scrollworks@gmail.com and I'll forward you the powerpoint I use for presentations. All of these pieces, by the way, are of my own design and are based on photos from US government agencies (US Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management specifically) which are in the public domain. Rights to the designs remain mine. (Dull stuff, I know, but I'm pretty careful about this-- I know of some outstanding designers who no longer design due to copyright issues...) Anyway, here ya go:



Oh- and thanks to Gene for telling me how to post these!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2015 10:12AM by gene.

Wow!! GREAT WORK! How long does it take to make one of those?

I right-clicked an image and pasted the image URL into the address bar. All those pictures... Great stuff!

Hey, everybody:
LOOK WHAT I FOUND! (I was curious about the scroll saw segmentation technique, and stumbled upon this.)

How in the heck do you make so many very sharp turns without butchering one side of the cut? How wide is your blade?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2015 10:38AM by gene.

Thanks for your kind words, Gene. It's always nice to hear people appreciate this!



That's my "workhorse" blade next to a toothpick. I figured that the photo would best give a sense of scale for most, but for you engineers out there, that's .011" (.28 mm) thick by .029" (.74 mm) wide by 5" (127mm) long. The idea is to minimize kerf loss, the wood removed from the blade path. A blade this fine leaves very little difference in finish quality between the sides (there is a microscopic bur on one side; at this scale there's little or no noticeable difference), and this particular blade design is intended to minimize backside tearout. It essentially leaves me with a finished surface right out of the cut.

As far as time goes, wolfie up top is the first I did, and the one I've done the most of-- I've got him dialed in at about 5 hours of work time. He took 7-8 hours when I first started. The horse is probably the most time consuming of the pieces shown; at 9-10 hours. These numbers reflect active work times-- there are drying times for staining, glue-up, and finish coat in which I just leave it alone (stain on the blackest parts, like the pupils of the eyes, takes as long as 48 hours to dry, depending on temp and humidity). Also, I haven't been counting time for panel assembly, although I probably should.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2015 05:37PM by zarling.

Great work, I am glad I told you to feel free to show off. Haven't checked out your whole site yet and maybe you have it there, is there a certain type of wood you use or does it depend on the project and look you are trying to achieve and also how thick of a piece of wood do you use?

It just needs to be a light-colored wood, the closer to "white" the better. The lightest tones in the finished work are unstained wood. Maple, aspen, poplar and pine are probably the most commonly used woods, and I'd say you're aiming for a 3/8"-5/8" thick panel to work with. Thinner than that and there's not enough surface area to offest depth and glue strongly; thicker and the finished piece gets a "blocky" appearance that I dislike. I like maple the best, but primarily use aspen due to availability-- I can get 1/2" aspen boards locally; the thinnest maple I can get is 1"(locally, anyway....I'm too picky on my wood selection to order it online.) I prefer to work with stock 3/8"-7/16" thick. I'm not set up to resaw in my shop, and I hate the thought of wasting over 1/2" of maple planing it down. Just can't bring myself to do it on a regular basis.

One thing I like about this technique is that so few have worked with it that it's not yet fully developed. There was no one to learn from, so I taught myself. In this case, I think that's an advantage. I would have picked it up faster with a mentor, but in telling you how you can do something it can be difficult for even the best teacher to avoid implying what you cannot do-- whether they intend to or not. I never had anyone tell me what I can't do with this technique before I was advanced enough to prove them wrong. So I'm always experimenting and trying out new methods and ideas. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having a teacher in most things but when a method is still nearly in the experimental stage, sometimes you progress faster without the limits implicit in the rules.

Go through a lot of blades?
When I first looked at that picture, I thought that toothpick was one of those corn dog sticks. Wow! That's a tiny blade!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2015 08:08AM by gene.

Nah, I don't do too bad on blades. I'll get 2-3 simple pieces (like the wolf or the eagle head) done on a blade. The horse, the deer, and the diving eagle all typically need two blades, with a little wear left on the second one when I'm done. I think the most I've gone through on a project is 5. That was on a portrait with over 400 pieces (back then I still tried to count the segments; kept losing count in the mid-400 range), and my cutting skill was a lot lower then, so I was harder on blades than I am today. Blades like this are typically in the mid-$30 per gross range, so I don't worry too much about it.