Fidget Spinners!

Well I may be late to the craze but I am building three Fidget Spinners.

A fidget spinner as explained in Wikipedia

 I found some optical cable rolls at work that were made from MDF for the ends of the rolls. So I ended up with 12 round MDF pieces 18 inches in diameter 1/4 inch thick. They are perfect for things that I can cut on my scroll saw but I intend to paint. Such as these Fidget Spinners.

I have three distinct designs I am working on. The first two are from Steve Good of scrollsawworkshop.blogspot.com he designs patterns and gives them away for free. Has plenty of tips and ideas overall his site is a very good source of information about scrolling.

His first pattern that I cut is this one. At this point I have cut out the shape but I have not yet drilled the holes for the bearings. I decided I need to drill these out as I wanted perfectly round holes and it was a good excuse to use a Forstner bit.

Then I made up this one from the Batman Signal. This was interesting as I wanted the shape but struggled with how big it should be and still fit between my fingers. My hand is not large so it was a challenge but in the end it just fits my hand which means most people will be able to play with it.

I still have the pattern glued on the mdf at this point as I had just drilled the pilot holes so that I could drill from both sides to help eliminate tear out from the Forstner bit. I don't have a drill press so I just used my hald held drill and held it as straight as I could which seemed to have worked out fine. Here are the pictures of these drilled and the pattern removed. I have sanded them to get them as smooth as possible and get rid of any fuzzies that were left over. from the drilling and scrolling.

I have begun to paint them and once I am done and I put the bearings in I will post more about these.

Thanks!

Intarsia!

So I have been wanting to get started in Intarsia now for a while. But my confidence about following lines was low when I first thought about it. I think my ability is about where it needs to be to start down the Intarsia path. For those that don't know what Intarsia is it is using different color thicker woods and shaping them. Woods like Purple Hart, Yellow Hart, Walnut, Black Walnut, etc. You cut them shape the pieces by sanding and grinding the wood to give it texture and then you just clear coat it and let the natural wood be on display.

I have just started to go through the Intarsia Workbook by Judy Gale and Jerry Booher.

It starts off real simple with the first piece being  a bow. It is all out of the same piece of wood with the grain all in the same direction. So all you have to do is cut out the pieces and then shape them by sanding with hand and mechanical help. Can we say time consuming! Any way here is the bottom of the bow left and right pieces. The right piece has just been cut out and the left piece I have begun to shape. I don't have all the right tools but I do believe I have enough to work on these beginner pieces. We will see how I do and if I want to exploer getting some nice sanding tools. But I think with what I have I can do most things. As with tools the better quality tools and the ones designed for specific jobs will make it easier but any tool can be used. I did not start out with an Excalibur Scroll Saw. I worked with a simple Craftsman 16" saw for quite a while before I felt the investment for a much better saw was warranted. I can tell you my quality went way up with the really nice saw. I did not have to fight the saw so much. Almost no vibration. So I'll work on this Intarsia stuff for a while before I decide if it is something I might be good at before investing in specific tools to do it.

Any way here is what I have started to shape the right bottom bow. You can see how much I have sanded off the right one already. It is still quite rough and has a ways to go but it is starting to shape up.

First one looks from the side profile to show how is is shaping up. You draw pencil lines on the wood and then sand towards the lines.

This second picture is just showing it from the top. You ca see the rough shaping that has taken place.

Here is an nice example of what  can be done in Intarsia. This is not mine and I only hope I can do such a fine job as this. But it is something I would like to do. There is no paint on this this is all just using natural wood colors.

Well this is what I want to do as I go forward we will see if I have any success with this. Of course I won't stop doing the others scroll saw work that I do.

Real men Become Cyclists Final

Well here it is

I put an 1/8 in baltic birch plywood backer on this. I decided that i would add some color to it. So I had to figure out how to paint different areas in different colors without seeing bare wood or the wrong color showing. So this is what I ended up doing.

1) Put blue painters tape over the side I was going to paint.
2) Printed out another copy of the pattern
3) Put clear packing take over the paper pattern. I did this since I was having issues with the paper tearing while cutting
4) Removed the cut out pieces leaving behind the uncut tape.
5) Applied two coats of the paint in the uncovered areas.
6) Removed the tape mask.

Then I glued on the back. This is the result. The result was how I wanted it. Only the colors I wanted to show thru do and no unpainted wood is showing. So in my book it is all a success. I think next project will be thinner as the colors don't really show up as nicely as I would have liked. You can force the photo to come out by making sure how the lighting hits and penetrates the cuts.

Thanks for looking.

Real Men Become Cyclists Pattern

OK So I was asked if I could post the pattern and after playing with some things and I figured a way I could post the pattern. It is just being posted as a PNG file which since it is just an image file can be posted as a picture on the blog and you should be able to download it as such. The size of this was created to be a sheet of paper so it is 8.5x11. I did create this is Inkscape but it seems when thinking about this that most everyone is selling/giving patterns away they are either images or PDF's. Since this is just a blog and I currently have no way to post the pdf so that it could be easily downloaded I opted for the image format.

I like red lines on the borders and light gray on the inside. I find it very hard to cut when it is all very black. I loose the blade in the black and it drives me nuts so I make them colored the way I prefer. Hopefully, you will like it this way also.

If you want to resize it you can use GIMP or any other such tool that will resize images.

Anyway here is the pattern if you like it please leave a comment and let me know.

Real men Become Cyclists Part 3

Well, the cutting is done. This was cut out of 1" Poplar, but since this is wood in reality it is 3/4". You really can't see the green tint. All that is left to do is to finish it off. It is not perfect but what the heck. If you create you know what it is like. It is never as good as you want and there are always flaws but I'm never going to be perfect and this is an imperfect world. So you eventually learn to just create and do as good as you can. Sometimes you even win things even when you think the job is so imperfect.

I will at least put Danish Oil on it and a backer board with color. Still deciding if I will use any type of clear coat on it. I tend to stay away from that simply because I suck at finishes. So I will post at least once more about this once I finish it.

Thanks for looking!