Gordon Dale
10-20-2020, 4:47 PM
Recently I was unable to resist the temptation to buy an old beater scroll saw from Craigslist. My thinking was: I don’t know anything about scroll saws and don’t really need one, but it’s so cheap I’d be a fool to pass it up. My subsequent frustration with the damned thing led me to revisit a lesson I should have learned from early experience, but didn't.
In one of the many rural towns I lived in as a kid, there was a youth shooting club in the school basement. The rifles were .22’s in various stages of disrepair, some with barrels that looked as though they’d been used as jack handles. Naturally, we spent a lot of time compensating for their inadequacies. Then one night a friend of mine showed up with an Anshultz competition rifle his father had bought him and, in no time at all, he was just blowing us away.
That was the lesson: my friend’s Anshultz would shoot as accurately as he could aim it. And that allowed him to forget the tool and focus on technique.
Which brings me back to the scroll saw. I’ve spent a lot of time fussing with it and consulting online forums and, finally, I’ve just had to accept that it’s one of those tools that will never be better than barely adequate. Within an hour of using it I'll be looking for a tall building to throw myself from. I grew up believing that if you wanted to start something new, you started off with the cheapest (preferably free) equipment you could find, with the idea that you could justify investing more as you grew into it. When I think back on it now, I wonder how many things I never grew into because the initial experience was so maddening. I realize of course that I don’t need to go out and purchase a top of the line scroll saw. But I owe it to myself to start off with something that is a pleasure to use and won’t limit my performance straight out of the gate.
In one of the many rural towns I lived in as a kid, there was a youth shooting club in the school basement. The rifles were .22’s in various stages of disrepair, some with barrels that looked as though they’d been used as jack handles. Naturally, we spent a lot of time compensating for their inadequacies. Then one night a friend of mine showed up with an Anshultz competition rifle his father had bought him and, in no time at all, he was just blowing us away.
That was the lesson: my friend’s Anshultz would shoot as accurately as he could aim it. And that allowed him to forget the tool and focus on technique.
Which brings me back to the scroll saw. I’ve spent a lot of time fussing with it and consulting online forums and, finally, I’ve just had to accept that it’s one of those tools that will never be better than barely adequate. Within an hour of using it I'll be looking for a tall building to throw myself from. I grew up believing that if you wanted to start something new, you started off with the cheapest (preferably free) equipment you could find, with the idea that you could justify investing more as you grew into it. When I think back on it now, I wonder how many things I never grew into because the initial experience was so maddening. I realize of course that I don’t need to go out and purchase a top of the line scroll saw. But I owe it to myself to start off with something that is a pleasure to use and won’t limit my performance straight out of the gate.