How to Cut Large Words on a Scrollsaw

hey guys leslie here today i'm going to be taking you through how to cut up this 32-inch welcome sign on a 20-inch scroll saw the size of your scroll saw doesn't limit the size of your project so let's get started okay guys to get started you can see that i have prepped my material this is a half inch piece of birch plywood i've covered it in painters tape to protect the wood from the spray adhesive i sprayed the spray adhesive on top of the tape and then stuck my large 32 inch welcome cutout on top the first thing that you want to ensure when you're doing a large cut out on your saw whether it be a word or a letter or a shape is you want the piece of wood that you're working with to be as small as possible even though it's quite large i could have left this on the sheet of plywood and not cut it with my jigsaw to size but if i did that it would be much trickier to maneuver while i'm driving the piece through the blade on my saw so i'm going to get into how to do that eventually that's the whole point of this video but i just want to show you the prep steps so that you're best prepared to do that so when you have your project adhered to your board cut out as close to the size as possible with leaving room for you to maneuver it the next thing we are going to do is drill our pilot holes there is the temptation to cut in from the outside edge and then just continue through cutting your piece but when you cut from the inside edge you are causing instability in the entire project pilot holes drilled into the project leaving the outside intact leaves stability in the piece so that it's not wobbling around and you aren't having to hold the material together when you're planting the pilot holes for your project it's important to place them strategically when you think about the limitations of your saw you won't be able to place a pilot hole directly in the center because when you try to cut it out you're going to be hitting the back sides of your saw which i will get into in a little bit but what i typically do when i'm drilling my initial pilot holes is i will get close to the top edge because what i'm going to do is i'll feed my blade through that pilot hole cut down one side and then cut down the other since i'm using a half inch plywood material i'm going to be using a number five modified geometry blade by pegas the modified geometry blade simply means that it's a combination of a skipped tooth and a reverse tooth blade this allows for a very fast cut and it's also cutting from both sides because i'm using plywood that reverse tooth is really important because it does prevent tear out when you're working with finer materials like a plywood two things that you're going to want to keep handy while you're cutting a roll of tape any kind of tape and a drill to continue drilling your pilot holes so make sure you have those on hand and just to note here a dust mask is super important when you're cutting on your scroll saw but because i'm talking i don't have it on for this one moment but always wear your dust mask all right let's go [Music] so in order to do the inside cuts [Music] i'm holding [Music] and you're gonna see what happens when you try to shift so you can see that there i'm stuck what i'm going to do now is back out back to my pilot hole i'm going to shift it and cut along the other side but i'm going to continue into the point so you can see right here i wasn't able to stay on the line because of the limitations of the saw when you're hitting that back like that you really have to work the angles of your saw in order to get a clean cut so now that i've cut out the majority of that interior cut i was coming at it this way what i'm going to do is simply flip it around this way and cut back up this side to clean up that interior cut back on your you're gonna see line because this is about to take me i'm gonna shift my hands this one was breaking this one was cutting i'm gonna shift this to braids i'm gonna move my body around grab this egg [Music] so in case you haven't noticed if you do sit to scroll if you're planning to cut a large word cut out it's time to get on your feet you're gonna do a little dance while you're cutting this out using pilot holes to cut down each side of a large word or shape allows you to cut a large item on a smaller saw without hitting the back [Music] that we've completed all of the inside cuts we're going to go ahead and get started on cutting the outside the way that i do the outside cuts is i start from one side and i go as far as i can then i'll take it out and cut from the other side and meet in the middle when cutting a large word cut out it is important to remember to always brace your work with one hand to prevent vibration and use the other hand to drive or direct your work through the blade all right guys so you can see here i have maxed out the thread of my saw the dalt is a 20 inch variable speed scroll saw it was able to cut to here so what's remaining and i'll just show you guys 12 inches because this is a 32 inch word cut out so now that i've maxed out the size of my saw like i said before it's not going to max out the size of your project what you're going to do is simply slide your blade out you're going to flip your project around and start cutting from the other side and i'll show you from the back you can see we have the entire bottom portion of that sign cut out what i'm going to do now and as i mentioned previously what you want to keep next to you your drill and tape this tape is one of the key parts of doing large word cut outs when you are cutting this and a portion of your work is now flexing out it is susceptible to breaking it can catch on the edge of your saw um making it hard to complete your turns so what you'll want to do is flip it over to the back side dust it off and apply whatever tape you want to use i like painters tape because it's easy to remove afterwards but what i'm going to do is stabilize my piece by taping the portions that are already cut out so that they don't bounce around while i'm cutting you will need to replace reapply tape as you're going because you will depending on the pattern probably come through and cut some of those out again but i always like to as soon as anything is starting to pop off on my project i'll apply a little bit of tape to keep that stable so you can see now that's not moving it's not going to pop out and catch on my table as i'm continuing the cut so now that we've done the bottom portion i'm going to go through the same pilot holes on the end and cut as far as i can into the middle before starting on the other side i just want to show you guys a really great way to get started on a line that you've already begun to cut i've threaded my blade back through the initial pilot hole but i've already cut down this side i can remove the pattern there so you can see so you can see i've already cut this side so what i'm going to do is i'll turn the saw on and once the blade is moving i'm going to thread it back through the hole that i've already cut and then start cutting out of that already cut line that will show a full continuation of your cut and you won't have that lift before you start cutting [Music] okay guys so now that i've cut out the next half you can see that this is really popping out because it's fully cut out of the material again i'm going to put tape on this back side to stabilize it so that when i'm finishing cutting out the other side this side isn't bouncing out if i hadn't taped the back side of this while i'm trying to cut this side this portion of my work would be falling through the bottom of my piece of material if that happens rather than focusing on simply holding the edge of my board while i'm cutting and driving through the blade i would be focusing on holding that and stabilizing it hoping that it wouldn't break while i'm working so it's a really simple way to keep your stabilized and to keep your focus on cutting not your focus on holding your piece of work so as i mentioned before you want to keep your drill handy just in case you need to do some extra pilot holes as i'm cutting out the final side of this project i ran into the back of my saw and i wasn't able to come around the top of this e so what i'm going to do is remove my work from the blade and i'm going to drill a pilot hole just like i would on the interior cuts right at the top of this e so that i can cut down this side and then continue cutting around [Music] all right guys and there you have it a 32 inch welcome sign cut out on a 20 inch scroll saw thanks for tuning in to this video today and if you like this video i've always wanted to say that don't forget to like and subscribe okay bye

Channel: Oak&Feather Decor

Views: 7,404

Rating: 4.9796953 out of 5

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Id: qO00Z7hatK4

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021