Scroll Saw versus Jig saw - Family Woodworking

Ok after the initial excitement at finally getting hold of a scroll saw i am back with both feet on the ground.

Yesterday i tried using my "free" and refurbished 24" delta rockwell scroll saw to cut out some holes in a piece of 3/4 MDF.

Now this sheet i wanted the holes in is about 28x28 so i figured hey this 24" scroll saw should work well. NOT.

I dont get it quiet frankly i dont see how this saw was really used back in the day or nowadays unless you married to old iron.

To change the blade or rather to even get a blade set up on this saw is a mission. Worse when the part is large. I fiddled and faddled and eventually gave up after breaking upteen blades and then went inside.

After cooling down i thought of another way to do what i wanted and hauled out my cheap junkie Skil jig saw. Then remembered (luckily) that i had purchased some new Bosch blades for jig sawing and put one in.

Well it turned the really crappy jig saw into a sweet cutting machine, well at least by comparison to trying to use the scroll saw to do this job.

This morning i woke to think i must have been doing something really wrong in the operating technique for this saw. I mean to get a piece over the blade you got to lift the whole blade guide support mechanism with air blower and all. Yes its a thumb screw but in numbers of operations to get a blade fitted its more than i think should be the case on a scroll saw. When i see u tube videos of guys changing blades on a dewalt man its like greased lightning.

Add to that in order to secure the balde in the blade clamp you need a allen key. Then you need three hands one to pull down the spring loaded blade holder bar, the next to hold the blade center in the clamp area then the other hand to tighten the blade.

I gotta be doing something totally wrong or this is really just old iron and i gotta part with this thing. Its a huge machine in terms of length sticking out and if one cannot work a large piece without all the hassle i dont see the point of keeping it.

This was not even fine scroll sawing. I was just wanting to cut rough rectangles. Then i have a template to clean em up with my trim router bit. But using a jig saw and a standard drill bit was way way quicker.

Can anyone shed light on this topic that would make me spare this machine and keep it.

I am guessing that back in the day (yeah way back) this was all there was but today heck i could have done what i wanted with a coping saw quicker than the delta scroll saw. Also the thin pinless blades i got from the flying dutchman well they work but broke repeatedly. When you add that to the process time man i wanted to do my task not play scroll saw all day. So i took a coping saw blade knocked out the pins and put that in to work it and it was better but still no bonanza when you gotta go through hoops and jumps to get to the next hole.

I dont get it.

Source: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?26809-Scroll-Saw-versus-Jig-saw

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