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Step 8Let's make some jazzy stuff!
The safety note: avoid putting your finger into the blade or near the hand screw that attaches the blade to the plunger; wear safety goggles, and please be careful.
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Ok so here we go. Scrounge up some boards of wood. I recommend starting with nice thin bits and seeing how you go. As you go to thicker and harder woods you may notice the motor straining a bit... That is expected, it is just a poor little sewing machine motor. What helps massively is to put some bee's wax on the blade. Particularly if you find it is slowing during tight curves, this is great stuff as it stops the edges of the blade binding on the wood. To apply, make some cuts to heat up the blade and just wipe a bit on - it should melt and cover the whole blade straight away.
Using this method I have found it to work well for thicknesses of up to about 10mm (of solid oak). If you want to go crazy you could look out for, say a 1/4 horse power motor, bolt it to the side and transfer the drive using a belt to the hand turn wheel. I didn't think it strictly necessary - but we will see how long this motor lasts ;) To improve its chances it is important that you take your foot off the gas the second you get a hint of a complete stall - It will burn out shortly after if you keep feeding it power.
To make wooden designs, you can simply cut away at the wood, making a pattern of your own design on the fly. Or you can pencil a design onto the wood and cut round that. Another option is to draw out your design on paper and stick that to the face of the wood with glue or double sided tape. Yet another option is to print out super elaborate designs that you make or download on the computer, and stick them on.
Like the things you can draw with regular art media, the number of things you can sew-scroll are endless. You can use it to make gifts like wooden keyrings, jewellery (you could do variations, for example, of this kind of thing), interesting shaped boxes and containers, wooden toys, bird houses/mansions, ornate photo frames, wooden lettering, and so on... Let your creativity loose.
You can also make all manner of Christmas decorations like I have.
Have fun with it and do your own thing!
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Ok so here we go. Scrounge up some boards of wood. I recommend starting with nice thin bits and seeing how you go. As you go to thicker and harder woods you may notice the motor straining a bit... That is expected, it is just a poor little sewing machine motor. What helps massively is to put some bee's wax on the blade. Particularly if you find it is slowing during tight curves, this is great stuff as it stops the edges of the blade binding on the wood. To apply, make some cuts to heat up the blade and just wipe a bit on - it should melt and cover the whole blade straight away.
Using this method I have found it to work well for thicknesses of up to about 10mm (of solid oak). If you want to go crazy you could look out for, say a 1/4 horse power motor, bolt it to the side and transfer the drive using a belt to the hand turn wheel. I didn't think it strictly necessary - but we will see how long this motor lasts ;) To improve its chances it is important that you take your foot off the gas the second you get a hint of a complete stall - It will burn out shortly after if you keep feeding it power.
To make wooden designs, you can simply cut away at the wood, making a pattern of your own design on the fly. Or you can pencil a design onto the wood and cut round that. Another option is to draw out your design on paper and stick that to the face of the wood with glue or double sided tape. Yet another option is to print out super elaborate designs that you make or download on the computer, and stick them on.
Like the things you can draw with regular art media, the number of things you can sew-scroll are endless. You can use it to make gifts like wooden keyrings, jewellery (you could do variations, for example, of this kind of thing), interesting shaped boxes and containers, wooden toys, bird houses/mansions, ornate photo frames, wooden lettering, and so on... Let your creativity loose.
You can also make all manner of Christmas decorations like I have.
Have fun with it and do your own thing!
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Apr 8, 2010. 5:48 PMbabbs
says:
this is a sweet instrutable
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Jan 17, 2010. 6:48 AMpeterwales
says:
Instructive and useful. Another entertaining article in its own right. Congratulations Bongodrummer
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