A few years ago I had the pleasure of posting some of Dave Kettunen's work here on the blog. Dave is back with another article to give some insight and tips on working on these complex projects. Dave is a master fretwork clock builder with several years of experience. He is kind enough to share his knowledge with us again. Check out his Facebook Page for more.
Hi, I want to introduce myself, I’m David Kettunen. I started scroll sawing around 2009 when I was given a saw (Hegner V22) by my uncle who had to leave his house for assisted living. I started cutting very simple things such as ornaments to “get the feel” of how the saw operates/cutting.
I graduated into cutting clocks about 6 months later and cut a bunch of Gothic Wall Clocks as gifts to my boiler operators when I retired. Since that time and up until now, I’ve cut 22 different designs (some of them multiple times as stated before). Almost all of my finished works were given as gifts to family/friends.
Some of the things that I’ve learned over the years is many of the plans sold today are from hand drawn plans. Many of them are copies of copies and the parts are not necessarily “true” so I’ve had to make allowances and sometimes redo a few parts. I precut as many of the pieces as possible to keep them the same width and height (again lessons learned here) so I’m not too worried when the print is not quite square. If you don’t have the tooling, make absolutely sure that the print is square and true (hand correct if necessary). I’m blessed with all the tools necessary to take rough cut boards and make finished boards for my projects.
One of the first things I do when I get a new set of plans is to have 2 copies made. One is marked as original (usually the purchased plan) and the second is the working copy and the third is cut up and scanned into my computer. All plans have multiple parts and you don’t want to pay to have that many copies made. I’m graduating to cutting my favorite clocks at 65 to 75% of scale so I’ve reprinted and rescanned as a PDF file. That works great for resizing.
I’m not going to get into recommendations as to saws and saw blades to buy. Everyone has their favorite. That being said, I would highly recommend that if you want to tackle some of the more detailed clock plans available, get the highest quality saw you can afford. It will make cutting that much more enjoyable. I’m getting close to having over 1000 hours on my saw now and I have no idea how many hours my uncle had on it, so it’s served both of us well.
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Now for today's project. This wooden journal uses 5.5" X 8.5" lined filler paper. It also uses 1" book rings. I purchased both at Staples. There are seven different designs in the pattern book. The one in the picture was customized with my daughters name. You can use any stencil font to customize your journal. Here is a link the the font I used.
www.stevedgood.com/WordArt.ttf
Just download and install the font on your computer. You can then use any program that will let you set the size of the font and print out the name. My Stencil Printer program in the eStore will work for this. It is Windows PC only so MAC users will have to find another solution.
I made the first page blue so the fretwork would standout. You can cut up some colored card stock or just do what I did and spray paint the first page. Use very light coats to keep the paper from curling.
The picture below shows what I purchased from staples to make the journal. You could substitute yarn for the book rings. The 1 inch book rings will only allow about 75 sheets to be installed in the journal. The paper was $4.50. A 16 pack of the 1" book rings was $4.
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