The fastest way to make sure the holes I drill to attach all the loose pieces of wood to the backer board before I start running the scroll saw is take a very small drill bit like 1/16" or so and drill in through the pattern all the way through the back side then flip the board over and using a drill bit just a hair smaller width than the 3/4"  long sheetrock screw threads and drill in through that small hole...The correct size bit to use if you hold the screw behind the drill bit you will only see just a small amount of the tip of the threads on each side of the drill bit.......This will keep the screw from busting the wood... A sheet rock screw is the same as a sheet metal screw as the threaded area is the same size from main holding area as it is all the way to the head.... Tapered threaded screws are too easy to get the wood busted as the screw goes

in.

So now all the holes are drilled up through the backer board up in to the body to be carved. But first take a damp hand soap bar and rub some of the screw threads and this makes them go in better... now install all the screws then flip the board back over and start scroll sawing.  

   Going through the front of the pattern you see where the pieces will be left large enough to accept the screws without busting the wood.. Going this route you don't have to worry about the 4 screws in each corner.. Only saw out the outside pieces and leaving only the pieces what will be carved...

 Next take the backer board off so you can start cutting away each piece to be carved..Separate the  areas that needs to be cut down more than the adjoining area. And keep checking to ee if more screws needs to be installed as the inside pieces are sawn away.

   The other way to make sure the screws are going in the correct location.. with the 4 screws holding the backer board in the 4 corners you can start sawing the wood away but leave the area of the body of the wood still attached to the 4 screws then once you get down around some of the clock that's jutting out, stop and counter sink a hole where there will be wood left after removing the waste area.

This way takes much more time as you will have to stop sawing when you get an area you know will accept a screw hole and go to the drill press and counter sink a hole from the back side of the clock and insert the screw....Then keep repeating sawing the outside until all areas have screws and the waste wood is sawn away...And each time you counter sink a new hole it needs to be hit with some sand paper to ensure smooth sliding on the scroll saw table..

  I like to use a #5 precision ground Olson scroll saw blade for the outside sawing, they seem to last longer before they wear out and easier to guide  making a straighter line. but don't know for sure then for all the inside cuts I switch to a flying Dutchman#3 blade which is thinner and don't make as wide of cut... The Flying Dutchman is better sawing curves.

  The small screw holes left sticking out the front of the wood one can either fill them with something or like I do is add more holes in line or what ever and this is becoming my style as I like to raise each hole area like it was there on purpose..

This picture just shows how I take care of the sticky between the area where the pattern quits and the wood extends to...A person don't want to get stuck to the work area so after I spray the packing tape then install the pattern there is always an area left with sticky stuff left all the way around the pattern and trying to guide the wood while sawing is impossible so I just take some paper towels and cut strips and lay over the sticky.. Problem solved.  

 This picture also shows as I am fixin to drill small 1/16" holes through the pattern all the way through the wood so I can flip the wood over and counter sink the screw holes...the backer board does have to be installed before I drill the small holes through the front...!!!

  Just sit and think how hard it would be to grind away certain areas if the pieces were left together...It will get clearer where the pieces should be sawn apart with each carving you make.

  Don't know but I might be back with all kinds of corrections after I read this and it don't make sense, cents, or since.

 Find one you like and click on it to make it the largest size on the screen before you click on to Save as and here I use Documents to store this type of pictures.

 Now you need a printer. No big deal here for I use for this is a Canon # 2522. About two or three months ago it was on sale  for less than 20 bucks.

  Once the picture is stored in documents I go to Rapid resizer and bring up the picture after I search documents.

 The picture shows it will be about 10" tall and 8.90" wide. Click on print and it will go to a screen  and tell it how many copies and be sure the printer it on and push start. This size it will make two copies and you will have to cut down the line on the one you will attach it to the other side...

 Daughter gave me some 12" squares of 1/4" BB and this is perfect for the flakes. 

   I want to make two snowflakes so I  put clear Scotch brand shipping tape on one  piece of wood spray stickum on attach the pattern. I usually print out a few copies for later use and store them where I can't find them later...A strange habit I have.

  Okay, once the pattern is applied I find a number drill bit a couple of .oo2 smaller than the finish nails. I will cut 4 1/4" pieces of BB at once so I make sure the finish nails I use wil be a hair shorter then the stack of wood.. Go to the drill press and while a couple of black spring clamps are holding the wood straight I drill the holes for the nails. I like to leave the nails sticking up an 1/8" or so to have some for my fingers to push on while turning the wood.

 This flake is about the simplest I could find  but still has rounded  points. Thirteen inside cuts ain't bad so that is quickly taken care of then one continual sawing without stopping..

 Since this is going to be a compounded type you can see where the center of the other two pieces will be glued to I made a hair wider. Also see where the nails will be cut away.

  Once the pattern is removed from the top piece I draw a straight line on two of the pieces and scroll saw the line.

  I sure do like the All Pro sand paper 3M makes for I use it  to knock the  fuzzies off the bottoms of the pieces...Its very soft and flexible but for some strange reason Home Depot was the only place that stocked it then they quit selling it...The only time I use it is for knocking the fuzz off of the first coats of lacquer and the fuzzies on scroll saw projects and it last forever...

   I didn't use epoxy on these for the long skinny line is easy to put the poxy where it ain't wanted so I used Aleene's brown bottle glue.. It dries clear and is strong when it sets up...  The only reason why I use the products I do is because I test it all and don't especially do the norm.

  Check out my not staying on the lines. A person does not have to be a good scroll sawer for this and its hard to see any flaws when finished with the project..I found a pattern, cut it out then glued it up in less than a day.

  Only my thinking but a scroll saw snowflake is much more like the real thing than the table saw thingy! And a whole lot less steps in doing so. This one is 1/4" where the small ones are 1/8" BB.

 this is not the same box but is the way I start building one. 

 I have to print out 10 exact patterns. The tenth one is just solid with no holes for drawers. 

   All the pieces  I cut out for the drawers are later glued together except for the front of the drawer and the back of the drawer.

I use dowels to line up everything . If I don't use the dowels when clamping two pieces together it could slip just a hair one way or the other and cause lots of extra sanding or cause for the trash can. Each set of holes has to be in a different place than the next side of the pieces. And you can't drill the next side until  the first side is marked and drilled and glued.

Drawers are somewhere around 5 1/2 to 6" deep.   The body being one solidly glued up mass with no cuts joining each drawer keeps it all from warping from season changes..

  I use brasing or stainless steel rods for drawer pulls before I start spraying the clear  lacquer so they will stay looking good and not tarnish.

   I also put a wider drawer front on to cover up the possible gaps from sanding and creating a back looking mess. And here also the dowels help to line up the drawer fronts.

 So far, all the sawing was with the scroll saw so the reason I call my boxes scroll saw jewelry boxes. 

  Now before I glue the front of the drawer on and the back of the drawer on I first mark where the cavity of the drawer will be and cut that area out with a band saw. Then using the dowel holes I first pt in the pieces I can now glue the on and they will have bee lined up before the cavities of the drawers were sawn in...

  Its not a good idea to be drinking beer when all this is taking place for all these holes I drill has to have a stop set on the drill press or else...

 There is way more preparation in one of these boxes and a few more weeks involved.. I cut the last 4 boxes I made out outside my motor home while sitting in an rv park in Colo.. I had all the wood glued together for each piece I needed and would only glue on one pattern one at a time as I started to scroll saw each piece out... Gluing a pattern on two or three days before the sawing takes place the pattern will shrink and stretch  and some might ruin to not be usable.  I always took two or three extra patterns and pieces of prepared wood just in case... I have also found two different printers will make different size patterns even though I use the same pattern in two different printers..Not good when I am having to make multiple patterns and needing some more away from the printer I first used.

  When cutting out this many of the same thing and needing them as close to each other as I can get them, I find I have to start my scroll saw cutting from the same place and go in the same direction on all the pieces... Going two different directions on two different pieces a person has a tendency to lean or push the wood just enough to make differences and I get get bad line up problems and then add that many more pieces it gets too wild....Yes it ruined my very first wide box because of this...

  Using the dowel system where at least 3 dowels and most of the time 4 dowels on each side of all the pieces I can get things more manageable when its time to sand it all smooth on the inside and the outside and all the drawers.. All these have to stay in line as to how they were sawn so lots of marking goes on and off. Don't even know if this is understandable or not??

  And I can sure see the difference in my sawing from starting in the morning or just before I quit at night. Those lines can sure get wavy. 

   Jess

   This is the pattern that got me to carving wood and the patterns or I should say one pattern I got off the internet so I was not out much money while in the learning to carve..

I noticed it took me a couple of apples to round up these three clocks I printed out from the one picture to give me three different projects. I noticed the one in the middle I used some of my old leather punching tools I picked up over the years at garage sales... Anything to help in changing the appearance of the wood stuff I can buy cheaper than new is what I keep on my wanted list while looking over ones junk.

  I also used one pattern on these three items also.. This pattern happens to be out of wife's stained glass pattern book.

I don't worry too much anymore if I make a pattern really big and make the lines blurry and hard to follow with the scroll saw for I can hold the scroll saw steady enough to get decent pictures. The only problem with a big pattern like this 8 page pattern of the clock is taping all the pages together staight enough to end up with some that kinda looks professional... but hey the printers adds a small line especially to cut  with a pair of scissors so all you got to do is hold two pages at a time together while you cover the lines with clear scotch tape....They take the hard stuff out of it so even an idiot can proceed with a good pattern to glue on to the wood....

Here is the mighty big problem with a mighty big pattern...Can't remember for sure but I think this pattern was 34 inches tall and my Dewalt 788 from blade to the back of the saw will only handle 20" actually a hair less if one needs to turn the wood around while sawing......I did use a jig saw but those blades will only turn so much without twisting the blade in to...

  well I ended up with something that suited me so being bold and dumber I made the next clock even bigger..

 Then I had to drill a few holes to install the flowers after it all got shot a few times with clear lacquer  and now the pieces sticks out way out there where a cleaning rag will surly rip them off someday.... Not my problem!!!

  I hope I'm never asked to reproduce this same looking finish ever....

If you have ever had to hold a large piece of maple this heavy while trying to saw it to pieces is almost what made me quit doing wood working. That thing weighted almost as much as I do. Once I got some of the length of the big slab cut down so the 788 could saw I then had the saw table to rest that hunk of wood on but by then I had turned blue.. 

   Now the problem begins for I don't know anything about a Blog and this is where I am at...

Any questions, I hope I can find this  blog again to help!

 So in thinking ahead with my lovely we won't need that much shop cause in our visions every road and highway is the U S was going to be our work shop.

    Wild thinking but hey the very first 8 years of our last business we were open 7 days a week. Every day and even when it rained, we had many things to do. 

From experience, so believe me when I say build a shop for 20 or 30 years down the road. It will eventually get to where every tool and piece of machinery known to man and a few gorillas will end up in your shop. And lots of those just got to have, I can't work another day with out those new inventions never gets touched again. They are there taking up room and yes you will smirk and brag to every one who enters your shop. I almost have to pay someone to come in my door anymore cause all the people I know has learned their lessons. Once I finally get someone inside the door they claim I lock it so every one who enters has to go through the long sermons everyone has learned word for word over the years...

   Side tracked from my story already and not even talking bout the size of a shop. Men know size matters. In less than six months after I finished my shop I was tearing out the north end of the building fixing to add 12 more feet so now it would be 30x62. A motor home came into our life and I didn't want any part of it fading...when parked at home. But with all those highways, and some of them are even free to drive down but in a round about way still cost a bundle. Every trip we took a new map and a different color of Marks A Lot was used was to show every road we drove down... A new map and the marker thing was a results from the very first trip we went on right after we got married. This was before any kids showed up on our doors. We still argue how we got to Florida from Texas. Now every trip is recorded in color. I wounder if the markers fades like sales receipts? 

    Never having gone to any kind of construction or building classes, the library was my best friend. Having lived in the Lubbock area after I got out of high school another learning place was in the area where new homes  was being built. I never talked to any carpenters on the jobs but would sit around and watch. I bet they all thought , that is the youngest inspector we ever saw. I might have been responsible for their doing better work when I came around..I did witness a few guys who had picked up  hand full of nails for the other side of the house and had to put them on the ground and get some for the side they were working on.... 

   After having put up the forms for more concrete for the extension and waiting for the concrete trucks to show up it dawned on me this adding to another existing building was going to be somewhat harder than building one out all by itself.. So this is where I will show wife how exact my style really is, bowling or horse shoes or building a building a person should be at his best for all the world to see. 

  I used oil field up set tubing for all the up rights and had welded flat 6x6 plate steel to the bottom and top of three foot long 2 7/8 tubing burried  in the footing before the concrete was poured. So after the concrete set up I welded the steel studs on to the foundation.

 The building structure is ridgid and will be there after a tornado comes through. They might be bent all the way to the ground but will still be there.

    So how do I get the same exact roof slope and wall sides exactly in line so they will match up like it was all built at once. Quick and easy to say>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 I think I ended up with thirty different string lines going all kinds of directions and the metal siding and metal roof panels were not hardly faded in the six months or so they were up so hey, it all looks like one unit..

   When you work by your self you do things differently and make helpers using other methods. A really old fork lift that would only reach 8 foot high was my best helper.  I built an addition that would allow me using a chain hoist to lift up the pipe trusses to more than 16 foot in the air so I could let them down on 9 foot tall  2 7/8 pipe uprights and rest there while I jumped down off the forklift and weld each truss every ten foot  on the wall pipes. The old Perkins motor of the fork lift smoked like a mosquitoe sprayer but as long as I run it at an idle it worked great. Make the trusses stay sitting on top of a 2 7/8 " pipe I used 2 pair of Vise Grip chain wrench's locking two pieces of metal on to each side of the up right pipes. Thus making a saddle and the fork lift keeping them in the air, I could go in an get a cup of coffee while the trusses sat there..

 The only help I got was one day after I had put most all the sheet metal up on the walls a brother in law drove up and said looks like you might need some help. Well I could have used some the three previous weeks but yes today finishing up I could use it.

   The trusses I built one on top of the other laying down on the concrete. My reasoning, if one truss was crocked they all would match and would make the sheet iron all lay flat and pretty.

   I knew after all this extra extending would not get the motor home a place to park inside for the motor home clearance is 12'4" and the shop has 9 foot walls. I would get the extra clearance by cutting out the inside of the pipe trusses but first I would have to drill holes in the concrete installing new pipes under the end of each truss I would  have to cut out.  This was I would still have each end of each truss welded in to the ground through the concrete. 

 This area was a trailer paint room last week.

Then after I got each pipe buried in the concrete and welded under each truss I could go ahead and using a cutting torch cut the inside of each truss that was in the way. The motor home just barely fits but I have walking room beside it and I still have working space on each side of the shop and still have a 30 x 20 insulated with heat and air plus the shop area for wifes stained glass  8x20 heated and air.

  Oh and I was smart enough when putting up the concrete forms to lay pipe and drains for bathroom  and sink which saves lots of walking.

   I have more nonsense on shops but gotta wire my trailer right now thats it warm out.

My wife was an RN but not working so she could raise the kids so I knew she could go back to work if my ventures went bad.

I want to build a nice,big go-cart track. WHAT, say that again. There aren't any go-cart tracks around here, how do you know you could make any money was my kids questions and answers, except for my boy, it was OH BOY.

Working for the city fire dept was , back then, a very low paying job but because of the hours worked, 24 on and 24 off let one if he wanted to, have a part time job, which I had, so actually I wasn't going out in to the world cold turkey so to speak. My part time job was selling Mac Tools out of a step van...This was also a fun job for I knew my products and enjoyed being around people who used hand tools....

Pictures of the track I might not can find for back then pictures wasn't a concern.   The track and buildings took three years to build. The only professionals I used was to pour the cement and smooth it on the track its self. I put up all the forms. I poured and smoothed all the sidewalks Building the buildings and everything on the property was a new experience to me so I would go to the library and check out all the books I could find for what was coming up in the next few days of work.... I put in the septic system, did all the plumbing, electrical and all the sidewalks but I did trade out wiring the overhead lights over the track on the tall poles which I put in, I traded go- cart tickets for two guys labor for the track lights. This was before I decided to get the know how books from the library. The land was almost 2 miles past the city limits so I needed no permits except for the septic system. I called the inspectors before I started and they said come get  some instructions and go from there. 

After I closed the track at 11 each night I would closed the gates and leave the lights on so I could go into the area where I was planning to put the golf course and using strings and 2x4's I would lay out some thoughts on the ground then the next few days think over why was that good or what problems I would have with each hole . Most all my holes were multi holes. The only time we worked on the golf course during the day was on Mondays when the track was closed. The first 8 years the track was open 7 days a week. And most all those years I was plotting a golf course..

I realized right quick having a bunch of high school boys working for you was not good without some supervision for they would let their buddies kill each other on the track if I would have let them.

I added lots of things a normal mini golf would not have. Like in this pond in the picture. You can see a green on the other side. You putt in to a hole and then the ball goes down in to a cave which was under the waterfall to finish putting in the cup under the falls then come out from under the waterfall on this side of the pond.. I had added a 4x4 foot hole so they could see the waterfall from the inside the cave. Something I didn't plan on. On windy days the wind would blow water through the hole onto the carpet and get it dirty. So I installed some plexiglas over the hole and that solved that, just a little extra work. Number 3 green you laid down your putter and picked up a chipping iron and had to chip over a river to get to the hole. I built rivers and waterfalls everywhere. People would tell me there were more trees and flowers on our four acres than all of Odessa combined. So I went and looked myself and sure nuff, There are four trees in Odessa. kinda. 

My sweet wife drove the tool truck for a couple years while I was building the golf course. She was better at sales than I and especially she could make those guys pay their bills where I would let them slide for a while. She said some would go in to the bathroom to wait until she had gone to come out again. She would knock on the door and say I am not leaving until I get some money.

It took me 8 years to finish the golf course and about 6 years was changing my lay out of each nightly chore all the while doing lots of what if's. I had to replace a bunch of 2x4's making some of the greens cause they had rotted from ground contact. We had some remote control boats on a big pond with lots of shrubbery and women really bragged about the beauty we had created. Beauty yes but at a lot of extra labor. We finally got to putting name plates on most of the stuff because people could see things in the nursery and our stuff had grown larger with more flowers and things so it made our stuff more attractive, so they told us.

My thoughts were if I make mom and dad happy with our surroundings they would for sure bring the kids more often.

Running the go-carts while I was building the golf course I actually paid for everything as I built...No debt when finished

I also built a kiddy track for the small kids who were too young to ride the big go carts . It only had two coin operated animals that they had to drive by them selves on a 40 foot circle.  I never saw either machine sitting  idle.

My age limit to ride the carts was 9 years old but first they had to ride in front of mom or dad to show me and and the parents they were mentally old enough for them to handle the stopping and turning and this would make the parents feel more at ease....

You can't believe how many parents would lie and tell me the kid was nine just to get them to ride. Some dads thought their kids were smarter than a normal 9 year old. It took us a couple of years to come up with the age of 9. Most but not all could start to concentrate at that age, but not all. I would ask a kid how old he was before he got in the go-cart, nine was always the answer. Then as he was sitting there ready to go I would ask them what grade they were in. They had not learned to lie that good and would tell their actual grade which they would say 2nd or 3rd. If they were 9 years old and only in the 2nd or 3rd grade their minds was not ready for go-carts...

Maybe I can find this post so I can continue later. Sometimes all it takes is guts to do something different with your life.

I might can convince someone it isn't that bad even it you don't come out with a good ending, at least you were brave enough to try. 

Later.