Scroll Saw Dragon Pendant

About a month ago I started a project for a friend of mine from my online fiber artists with chronic pain support group, the Chronic Bitches. She loves dragons, and was oogling the many free dragon patterns in Steve Good’s scroll saw pattern catalog. Since I had many pieces of thin board on hand from the dog and cat pendants I’ve made, I figured I’d jump right in with the dragon pendant.

These are the first three dog necklaces I made and won runner up in the Gorilla Glue Contest on Lumber Jocks!

When I first started looking at the pdf for the necklace, I was shocked. This was just WAY too big to have be a necklace in my book. My chest isn’t that big, there’s space taken up with boobs! I pulled the image over to Microsoft Word for easy scaling with rulers. It’s amazing how often I use Word for pattern making actually. My reduced pattern measures 2 inches wide and just a smidge over 3 inches tall. I kept the same proportions as the original so my pendant wouldn’t end up elongated or smooshed looking.

I mounted up my pattern to some 1/8 inch thick walnut, drilled a few holes, and started cutting. It wasn’t long before I realized I had missed some of the entry holes I would need, that I wasn’t good enough to cut such bitty details accurately, and that getting so tense trying to cut something so small was only making my pain worse in my shoulders and upper back. I set the pendant on the back edge of my Excaliber’s table and proceeded to ignore it for a full month while I worked on other projects like my inkle looms, some toy cars for charity, and another Siamese cat necklace.

Tonight I went down to my friend’s garage to visit with my saw. I had to prepare a set of necklace blanks for a small workshop I’m teaching tomorrow night on how I make my inlay dog and cat necklaces. We’ll be making one of my favorite dog breeds tomorrow, the border collie! Once I got all my border collie blanks done, I still had a little time left before it was time to head home. The dragon pendant was glaring at me from the back of the scroll saw table. I fished out a size 60 drill bit, put in the bitty holes, and had a go at it since I already had a 00 reverse tooth blade in the saw.

Surprisingly, my skills have improved enough over the past month or so for me to be able to fly through making the pendant. Sure, I still spent about an hour finishing the cuts and another hour sanding down to a 600 grit paper and gently buffing in a mineral oil and beeswax finish, but still, I was flying compared to a month ago. I’m so excited to have it done! Before long maybe I’ll actually be able to do some of the more advanced ornaments from the book I got last year! I’d really wanted to make the train ornament for my dad and the motorcycle for my brother, but I messed up and broke the spokes in the wheels of both. I hope by next Christmas I can fly through those ornaments and give them out!

I love how it came out!

Tags: blade, chinese, craft, dragon, dragons, fantasy, free, jewelry, necklace, pattern, pendant, project, scroll saw, scrollsaw, walnut, wioodworking, wood, wooden, woodwork, woodworking, working

Toy Society Holiday Drop

On Christmas Eve, I dropped a handmade toy for the Toy Society. I made this little tow truck and car set:

I used a free pattern from Steve Good. You can download the pattern here if you want to make your own car and truck set. The only addition I made was to glue a small strip of wood across the back of the truck bed to keep the car from rolling off too easily. I left off the smoke stacks and the little button lights. The smokestacks have not held up well when my friend’s kids play with the truck I keep at my house and I didn’t want to have bitty lights that a small child could chew off.

I cut the body of the two cars from a scrap of 2×4 leftover from another project. The truck bed is cut from a fence picket scrap. I ran it through my planer to clean it up and get it to size. I actually like the look of the redwood fence picket truck bed more than the pine truck bed I’ve done on previous tow trucks. The wheel well strips on either side of the cab are cut from pine as the redwood was a bit too brittle to hold up well to tight curves on an item meant for child’s play. The wheels are all pre-made oak wheels from a local specialty wood shop. I cut the body of the car and truck with a HUGE blade in the scroll saw. It’s a reverse tooth blade from Woodcraft that’s so big it doesn’t even have a number. I used size 7 blades to cut the wheel well covers, the truck bed, and the dowels for the axles.

The drop was made on Christmas Eve around lunchtime in Old Colorado City on a bench in front of an Italian restaurant, some souvenir shops and art galleries. There was a gaggle of kids visiting Santa just a block and a half away, so hopefully a lucky boy or girl found this set just in time for Christmas!

In general, if you’re into scrolling, check out Steve Good’s site. He’s got TONS of free patterns, and several of them toys for doing Toy Society drops! This was my first drop, and it was fun. There will certainly be more! I cut several tow truck and car sets for my Christmas Eve drop, but I ran out of wheels, none of the wood shops were open, AND I couldn’t find my hole cutter set to make my own wheels. Talk about failure!