Scroll saw pulling to the side

[Wade Lippman]

A month or two ago I posted that my Dewalt DW788 (it is actually the identical Delta...) was pulling significantly to the side when I cut.
I was told it was likely a bad blade and I should change blades.

I finally got around to it,and put in fresh Olson Crown Tooth 16 TPI, Same results pulling to the side; maybe a 30* angle.
I tried the same blade in 6TPI and it was fine.

I was cutting 3/8" Philippine mahogany, which is pretty soft.
So why does the 16tpi pull while the 6tpi is okay?

[Jason Beam]

Probably a few or a combination of reasons:

Lots of scrollsaw blades are stamped, so they have a burr on one side which can make them drift. If you feel the side of the blade, you may feel it is rougher on one side than the other.

A 16tpi blade needs to be pushed a LOT lighter than a 6tpi blade. When there are that many teeth, the gullets are small and fill up fast. Meaning you have to cut slower. You may just be feeding it too fast and the gullets are packing up - that wood has to go somewhere and usually that is out the side of a stamped blade that doesn't have the burr - which makes the drift even worse.

Does cutting slower impact the lead you're seeing?

[John Shaffner]

My best guess would be that the blade tension is too low. You should hear a nice, high pitched "ping" when it is plucked under tension. As a rule, scrollsaw blades are stamped from a sheet of steel and have a burr on the backside of the blade. I have ground the back of the blade with a file to help eliminate that burr, and it does help. I'm not a big fan of Olsen blades anyway and have gone to using Flying Dutchman blades available from Mike's Workshop. Give him a call and let him know your needs and he will be happy to direct you to the correct blade type. Nice, knowledgeable guy with good pricing and excellent service.

HTH,
John

[glenn bradley]

I have the DW788 and agree with what has been said. Milled blades perform better than stamped ones and after trying milled blades I tossed the stamped ones I had. For finer toothed blades I really crank up the tension and the stroke speed and slow the feed rate. I'm assuming since the 6tpi cuts well you have aligned the blade perpendicular wit the table via the adjustment for this purpose (the manual is real poor on this but, the screw opposite the thumbscrew that grips the blade is adjustable).