Congratulations to my beloved, pugnacious, over confident younger son who scored his driving permit last weekend. No sooner did he get his permit that he nearly killed himself and his mother whilst out "driving" in nothing less than my precious ride. Thankfully, nothing serious happened but his confidence was battered a bit when he found himself driving on the wrong side of the road with traffic bearing down on him and his mother. All this happening in less than two shakes of a lamb's tale.
Same kind of experience I had last weekend when, armed with a hefty birthday gift card from the mother in law, I finally bought a scroll saw. The only thing stopping me from making painfully exquisite wall art and furniture was my imagination. Oh, so I thought.
To review, I want to make Yankee Stadium Frieze Shutters for our man cave. The shutters, they're actually panels, themselves came out pretty good. I finally finished them to such a point that I could test them for fit and their light blocking effectiveness. They leak a little light but I think that an easy fix with a little Styrofoam or other dense material, perhaps cloth, that will blot out any light getting through. This photo actually makes them look less effective than they are. You have to have seen how much light blasts through these windows during the day to see how much darker, cozier and movie theater like the space is now with the shutters/panels in place. Save for some trimming on the one on the left and paint touch ups, these are good to go. Now, we fabricate the Frieze. To the Bat Poles. Yeah.
To start, I took the above image of the 1976 - 2008 Yankee Stadium Frieze and blew it up on my son's computer monitor. At 5 1/2 X 11, it would be of ample size although I would've liked it to be a tad larger. The stock I bought is roughly 5 1/2 X 11 so I was stuck with that size. Swimming in a sea of blue, it would look great. And it would, if I was confident I can do it. The scroll and its demons had somewhat different plants.
Making a template out of copy paper? Not a good idea. Even packing paper is a better material for a template than this stuff. It's way too flimsy. I guess my success with the Jets logo using packing paper as a template gave me a false sense of confidence that I could do this using just plain old paper. Fail.
Second problem was transferring the itty, bitty outline of the Frieze onto the stock. Even though it's just paper, packing paper, which, again, I used to make the Jets logo, is much heavier than regular paper and lends itself to stenciling much better.
I also plan on making the Frieze larger than 5 1/2 X 11. I learned quickly that it's way too small for a first time scroll sawer like myself. Scroller? Once again, my ambition is greater than my ability. Back to the drawing board.
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