Work on it until you like it

I am working on some trucks.  I have the cabs rough cut out and followed the directions and pattern.  The next step is to sand and file the cabs until they look good to me.  What is that suppose to to mean?  I am good at following a pattern and design but be artsy, that is not me.  So yesterday I took out the vice and files and went to town.  I think I am going to be making more sawdust then product.  I am not the person to say something looks artistically correct or balanced.  So here is my first pass.  I have the rough out block and the good enough version next to it.  What do you think?

I also completed another puzzle.  This one is an Elephant.  I am getting better at the scroll saw.

More puzzles

 I have completed some more puzzles.  The first has been done fora while but needed to be sanded. This is is the dinosaur one. It is very similar to the barn and safari puzzles done earlier.  This is also a Wood Magazine plan.

This is the complete set.

The brontosaurus and the two trees

This is the Triceratops and one with the fin like back

 Then the background

These are from the puzzle book I received this year.  I am having a lot of fun with them and I can do these at my house because the tooling is there.

Yes it does say "MOOSE"  It was not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Big dinosaur and little dinosaur

An elephant. not particularly interesting but it is made out of aspen

This next one is the alphabet snake.  The hardest part of making this was finding a piece of wood that was wide enough.  It was an easy cut out. The instructions said to paint the pieces several colors.  I was told not to by my significant other.  I had a problem getting enough ink on the stamps for the first part of the upper case letters.  Other than that it turned out nice.

The reason I decided  to do stamps was because they were clean and I can use them again.  The book suggested stencils but I have not had good results using them.

The nice thing that these puzzles are teaching me is:

• I can not rush them.  Too  much pressure or faster blade speed tend to break blades and burn wood
• There are major differences in the size of blades.  A lower number blade in the puzzle makes for tighter fitting pieces but it takes longer.  While the outside of the puzzle can be done with a higher number blade with out sacrificing the detail
• I have to push the wood straight into the blade.  When doing curves and tight radii it is very easy to push from an angle.  This causes the blade to bend just slightly.  Even though it is slight it causes the pieces to come apart in only one direction.  I have to be more aware of how I am pushing the piece into the blade. 

As a side note I am working on a wood library for work.  They do not realize it but I feel it is going to be useful as we start talking about substitute wood species for oak and maple.  I am doing this through puzzles.