by woundedbear » Sun May 17, 2015 10:58 pm
I have been experimenting with my newly acquired scroll saw, it's just like the one sold on the Micro-Mark web site, just has the Proxxon name on the box. The one you can see on Micro-Mark"s is made for them by the Proxxon company. The video shows a dude cutting all kinds of curves in everything from foam, thin plastics, even tissue, and, "what looks to be very thin balsa wood". The instructions that came with my saw, are printed in 12 languages. It basically tells you not to stick your fingers into the blade when cutting with your new saw,"well nach!" The Instructions, and the video doesn't tell you a thing about which blade is being used for the different materials being cut. They just edit changing the blades out of the video. Well so far I have only experimented with one blade, It's one that the Flying Dutchman company sent me for free. Of all of the scroll saw videos on the net, and I think I have watched them all. The guys who make these videos swear by the Flying Dutchman brand blades. So I gave the folks at Flying Dutchman a call and told them what I was planing to cut. They really believe in their product and sent me three blades for free. The one I have been using is a 2-way cut, #5, it's 0.036"x 0.015", and has 13 teeth per inch with every third tooth being reversed, (they sent two of those) I have been practicing on scrip stock from three Guillow's laser cut kits that I am working on, so the densities are all the same. Now the results have been, that my saw will cut 3/32 inch stock just fine, no tearing on ether side of the cut, but with 1/16 inch stock the results are not so good. I haven't tried the other blade I have yet, but there are so many blades to chose from. The other type of blade that Flying Dutchman sent is called "Polar", what ever that means, it looks much courser than the 2-way cut blades as described above. It is also a #5- 0.041" x 0.015". Then there the five blades that came with the saw, three of them look mush like the Polar blade, Very course. The other two are much finer with teeth too small for me to count, and Proxxon failed to label any of them, "yeah" didn't see that coming. It looks like Proxxon likes to save money on printing. Now my question for the members of the form, does anyone know how to chose the right blade for cutting very thin,( 1/16"and 1/32") balsa ? Now I know there are different types of balsa as well, there's A grain, B grain, and C grain, then there the different weights, light weight, medium, and heavy, there is also very hard, and of course contest the lightest. I have one sheet of medium weight, C grain that's got a faint reddish color to it, and when in the right light seems to be tiger striped like a fine maple cabinet wood. Well there you have it which blades to cut which weight and grain of balsa. There some many variables, and I don't know where to start... HELP ! HELP ! SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME ! "Hay !", that's kind of catchy isn't it somebody should set that to music...I think I getting too sleep to wright...As always a preemptive thank you to anyone who can help...Goodnight dudes