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In this video I want to explain something that is really quite obvious to anyone who's been involved in woodworking for any length of time and
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might be completely unknown to beginners. So I want to talk briefly about the difference between a bandsaw and a scroll saw
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And the reason I want to do this is because I do hear from time to time from from beginners
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they're wondering what kind of machine they should get one or the other. And and the reason they wonder that is because both machines can cut curves in wood
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So that's why you might sort of lump them together in your mind, but they're really very different
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The bandsaw I've been talking about for a while and just to recap it's it's quite a versatile machine
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It can make straight cuts very deep in in large pieces of wood to make thinner wood
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And it can also cut curves, broad curves in thick wood or even very tight curves in thin wood
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By contrast the scroll saw is really only about cutting tight curves in thin wood
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So by thin I mean anything maybe as thick as 3 quarters of an inch or so. That's probably about all you can
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expect from a scroll saw. And the reason is because it's a much smaller machine. It's a much lighter machine
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It has far less power and just come over here for a minute and take a look at the blade
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Both of these machines are unplugged so it's safe for me to touch the blade, but this is the blade of a scroll saw
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I mean that's that's the extent of it right here. Okay, not
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just perfect for for cutting small things, but certainly this is the scroll saw is a specialty machine
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for cutting curves mostly for craft projects musical instruments. Small stuff like that
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A bandsaw can actually approach the performance of a scroll saw when it comes to cutting tight curves
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with the right kind of blade. But the big difference, the big advantage the scroll saw has is that the blade is like this
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It's not a band. So when I want to make an internal cut in a piece of wood
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you know a cutout shape or something like that where the cut does not go to the outside of the of the piece of wood
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Well, this is the thing because I can just drill a hole in the wood. I can feed the blade through the wood and then clamp it into the tool
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Can't do that with a bandsaw because the blade is a continuous band so you can't feed it into any kind of internal cut that you'd want to do but
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quite different machines. Although superficially if you're a beginner you might be wondering about one or the other, but this is strictly for
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decorative curved work in thin stock and this is for as you know a whole lot of other things
