• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Bob Easton

Chocolate powered woodworking

  • Home
  • Grinling Gibbons Tour

Woodcarving

New Frame Saw / Scroll Saw

November 26, 2022 by Bob Easton 8 Comments

It’s smoother, more accurate, quieter, and doesn’t scare the children.

photo of the scroll saw from the front

My previous scroll saw was an attachment for my treadle powered lathe. It was built from a postage stamp sized drawing by Roy Underhill. While it served well for years, it is a clanky, rickety, wobbly, insanely noisy collection of loose parts pretending to almost work as a saw. Accuracy is subjective. Yet, I cut many wood carving projects with it and was satisfied until arriving at a new project that wants several parts thicker than the saw could handle; basswood parts that are 3 inches thick.

This new saw, also treadle operated, is a simple frame saw that has the frame moving in a vertical plane, riding very smoothly on drawer slides.

photo of treadle operated frame saw

The support frame is simply an unfinished flat assembly of construction grade 2 x 4 lumber, joined by half-laps. It clamps to the front face of my workbench. Drop a rope from the bottom of the moving frame, loop it around a hinged treadle, and we have the motive power that pulls against the spring at the top of the support frame. That spring is only a couple of strips of quarter inch thick lattice, and more rope. Functional, not pretty.  It has the added benefit of storing away in minimal space.

For the table that supports the workpiece, I use my woodcarving bench-on-bench sitting behind the frame. Clamped to the bench is a piece of cabinet shelving with a hole drilled for the blade. Simple, and as with the other parts, easily stored in minimal space.

The saw frame itself is poplar, using bridle joinery. Most important are the blade holding pins and blade. These are parts from the Tools For Working Wood 12″ bow saw. I’ve used them before for a wonderful turning saw and for that earlier scroll saw. I cannot say enough good about them. The bottom pin has its flange trapped by a wood block screwed to the bottom of the frame. The top pin is adjustable thanks to being pinned inside a lamp pipe which can move inside that upper block. Tensioning is via a slightly bent cross bar. A variety of blades from TFWW offer a good range of cutting options.

photo of top blade holder
top blade holder
photo of top blade holder parts
top holder details
photo of bottom blade holder
bottom blade holder
photo of cut pieces for a Gibbons-like woodcarving

So, how well does it work? Two answers. The next photo shows the parts of a new carving project, all but one cut with this saw. They are 2 and 3 inches thick, with the longest being 21 inches long. The video shows a comparison between the old saw and the new.

What I haven’t shown you are the smiles that come along with using the new one.

Inspiration

The first inspiration appeared in the middle of a video made by Esteban Jiménez at his woodcarving shop in Barcelona. His treadle operated frame saw is gigantic in comparison to what I wanted. Impressive! Watch Esteban describe it and then demonstrate its operation:

Another inspiration is one of many examples I found of treadle operated fret saws used by marquetry artists. Here we see Christina Moreno using her frame saw:

Filed Under: frame saw, Shopmade, Woodcarving

3 More Walking Eagles

January 30, 2021 by Bob Easton 4 Comments

photo of 3 walking canes

A few years ago, I made one of these in walnut. Last year, another in cherry for one of my brothers. Now, three more in cherry, two for my other brothers and one for me. We’re all aging and gratefully still fully mobile. The time might come when one of these is handy. As I learned 6 decades ago as a Boy Scout: “Be prepared.”

I have already adjusted mine (far right) for the height I find comfortable. My brothers are about as tall as me; I’ll let them adjust their own. Here’s a useful guide for getting the right length cane.

Today’s temperature in the Peoples Republic of New York started at 15° Fahrenheit, leaving the shop at 36°. My cold tolerance in the shop bottoms out at about 50°. During the recent cold spell, I’ve deferred heavy work (such as hacking out bowls) abandoned the shop, and moved my carving bench and carving tools into a heated room, ideal for the detail carving of these eagles.

detail photo of 3 walking canes

As with earlier walking canes, these are built with a foxed tenon and finished with several coats of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil gun stock finish.

Filed Under: Woodcarving, Woodworking

Grinling moved

October 15, 2020 by Bob Easton 1 Comment

The Grinling Gibbons Society - Celebrating 300 years of his Life and Legacy

More than a lifetime, 300 years! When we make thing to “last a lifetime,” do we ever imagine them lasting 300 years? Many of Grinling Gibbons carvings have done just that. Next year, 2021, will bring the 300th anniversary of his death, and celebrations are being planned by a newly formed British Grinling Gibbons Society. Those plans aren’t quite online yet, but I’m watching for their announcements and will add them here as soon as they appear.

Bigger and Better

Photo of Grinling Gibbons statue at the V&A Museum

Hannah Phillip, Programme Director of the Grinling Gibbons Tercentenary, contacted me a few months ago while she was getting started planning the tercentenary events. Hearing of the events, I decided to make my previously published Gibbons articles and photos freely available for the Tercentenary.

photo of zooming in 3 steps

So, I’ve moved them from this hobby blog to a new home all their own. I’ve also upped the ante on photo resolution. All of my own photos are available in the full resolutions that come out of the cameras. Yes, we have images of manageable bandwidth on web page articles, but click through to get the full detail. A couple of hundred images from 13 locations exist now, and I’ve reserved space for a couple more locations where Hannah might enable us to take yet more photos … when pandemic travel permits.

Since one of my early goals was to bring more, and larger, photos of Gibbons work into being for all who care about them, all of my photos at the new site are being offered as “Public Domain” under the Creative Commons Zero, CC0, license. The Tercentenary organizers, you, and anyone else can use my photos as you please without license constraints.

Visit the new Grinling Gibbons Photo site.

P.S. In addition to the photos Eva and I managed to capture on two trips to London, I have included articles about modern day woodcarvers who imitate Gibbons in their own unique and beautiful ways: David Esterly, Patrick Damiaens and Alexander Grabovetskiy.

Filed Under: Grinling Gibbons, Woodcarving

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 27
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Footer

Recent Posts

  • New Frame Saw / Scroll Saw
  • Lamppost Sign
  • Goodbye PayPal – Goodbye Bob’s eBooks
  • Anarchist’s Workbench is Done
  • Why we keep offcuts…

Categories

  • About
  • Artwork
  • Boatbuilding
  • Boating
  • bowl carving
  • Boxmaking
  • Clocks
  • Drawings
  • eBook
  • etude
  • Eva Too
  • Eva Won
  • Fiddlehead
  • Fiddlehead model
  • Flying
  • frame saw
  • gilding
  • green woodworking
  • Grinling Gibbons
  • Guns
  • Hand tools
  • Humor
  • kerfing plane
  • Lettercarving
  • Mill Creek 13
  • Model building
  • Power tools
  • Rant
  • resawing
  • scroll saw
  • Shopmade
  • sign painting
  • Stonework
  • Swimming
  • Technology
  • The Wall
  • treadle lathe
  • Uncategorized
  • VSD
  • Woodcarving
  • Woodturning
  • Woodworking
  • workbench

Other stuff

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright ©2021 · Bob Easton · All Rights Reserved